Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc : Endgame
by Zephyr5
Summary: Rated for language and violence, shonen ai SxS, QxZ, Xu x Colin. The Battle Lines have been drawn, and the objectives are clear destroy Kylari before she can destroy Rinoa, or Rinoa loses control of her mind again...
1. Wrong and Right

AN: Aaaand - here's book four!

**Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc ~ Endgame ~ Chapter One ~ Wrong and Right**

The sound of the wind, screaming as it whipped around Balamb Garden's structure, was clearly audible in the silence of the office. It was almost loud enough to be the cause of the nervous fidgeting of five people seated at the long conference table - but not quite.

They had lost the Galbadian Garden Fleet because of the wind's sudden increase in fury. The hurricane-strong winds pulling in opposite directions had caused most of the ships to flounder, and left the rest defenceless against the Sawfish that had been attacking.

Balamb Garden itself had sustained substantial damage when it was blown out of the pilot's control, mercifully into the sea rather than the Gaulg mountains. There had been four deaths - all in the initial chaos - but the toll might have been higher had Zell not come up with an ingenious plan to slow the Garden's speed before they crashed into FH. Of course, they had still crashed, but much slower, and structural damage was all that the Garden or FH had suffered.

"What's with the weather anyways?" Zell finally asked, addressing the only figure neither fidgeting nor seated.

"A magical imbalance." Squall explained concisely, turning from his observation of the clouded skies and leaning back against the window, arms folded.

"A what?" Mayor Dobe enquired, understanding the words, but not their meaning - or implications.

"Too much magic concentrated in one place." Xu clarified. "But how?" She frowned, thinking it through. "Unless..." Worried comprehension dawned on all the SeeDs at the same time.

"Unless...?" The Mayor of Balamb prompted, already feeling out of his depth.

"Kylari has been killing sorceresses and taking their powers." Quistis answered slowly. Zell frowned.

"Wait, shouldn't that mean the wind should be changing direction with her movements?" Now both Mayors looked lost. "Uh, think of a sheet of rubber." Zell resorted to the classroom explanation in an attempt to clarify what they were talking about. "Magic is like small lead weights that distort it - so sorceresses tend to spread themselves out." He rubbed the back of his neck in agitation. "The more power, the bigger the weight - the bigger the weight the greater the pull..."

Impressive, Seifer thought, watching Zell with a little more respect. Then again, he ~had~ simply repeated, almost word for word, what they told all SeeD cadets.

The Mayors nodded sagely, fooling no one into thinking that they actually understood. Mayors were for dealing with people and physical problems. In their minds SeeD were for dealing with sorceresses and magical problems.

"Edea mentioned that Kylari felt able to dispense of Rinoa - but we know she's still alive." Seifer began, praying that no one would ask ~how~ they knew. A sorcerer was one thing, but if it got out that 'sorcerer' was basically a nicer way of saying 'necromancer', half their allies were likely to commit mass suicide - or simply keel over in fear. "Kylari knows we can track her if she has the weather following her every move - it would act like a beacon." Plus it would make her magic harder to control, the results of even a simple spell unpredictable. "She doesn't want that."

Squall watched silently as Quistis, Zell and Xu put the pieces of information together to form a tentative conclusion.

"Rinoa is imprisoned in the Centra tower. She has the powers of all the sorceresses except Kylari herself." The brunette sorcerer quietly confirmed. There was a soft hiss of surprise from Xu, but otherwise silence.

"So...what now?" Quistis finally asked. "Do we try and free Rinoa? Maybe she'll help us now she knows better?" Xu noticed with alarm that both the Mayor of Balamb and Mayor Dobe had identical glazed expressions. But as she opened her mouth to say something, Seifer caught her gaze and shook his head. Xu paled and shot a sidelong glance at Squall, realising the brunette was responsible.

Squall's voice in her mind was a shock, almost as much as the barely veiled warning - why didn't Squall want to talk about plans to end this? - and Quistis paled visibly. Zell, guessing the cause, threw caution to the winds outside, and glared fiercely at Squall, silently promising retribution should the brunette do anything to Quistis. Squall ignored him.

"I plan to lead a combined force against the Galbadian army. For them to have kept coming so long, Kylari must be driving and reinforcing them." Xu watched as the Mayor's gazes cleared, wondering what, if anything, they would remember from that brief period.

"FH can shelter the refugees from Galbadia and Balamb." Mayor Dobe admitted, almost grudgingly. "We can adapt the Sun Panel to hold several hundred people comfortably." The sad truth being, of course, that there were barely 150 refugees and non-combatants ~to~ shelter. Squall nodded.

"Then I would ask that you do so." He responded, more ordering than requesting, but not quite demanding. His gaze switched to the Mayor of Balamb. "I leave it to you and..." He glanced a question at Xu.

"SeeD rank 28 Cera Dimante." She replied, not expecting the question and giving the rank as well as the name of her civilian coordinator in her surprise.

"You and Cera to coordinate the relocating of the refugees." The Mayor nodded. "Quistis, Xu, I'll leave you to detail your own arrangements for non-combatants in the Gardens." The two women nodded.

There was a long pause.

"As soon as possible." Squall hinted, just as Seifer cleared his throat and rolled his eyes towards the door.

Quistis and Xu both hastily turned their rising motions into adjustments of their positions as the two Mayors muttered apologies and virtually scurried from the office.

***

"Why didn't you answer my question Squall?" Quistis asked, almost scowling at him in a mixture of irritation and confusion. "Morale is almost rock bottom - think what a boost it would be for them to know we're going after Rinoa, that we might stand a chance..." Squall and Seifer shared an unreadable look.

"It's like a see-saw." Seifer finally answered, slowly and carefully, for once thinking about his words before saying them. "If you promised a kid a puppy for their birthday, sure, they'd be over the moon. But if you had to break that promise? By not promising anything, even by implication, there's hope, but no one sets those hopes up for a fall."

"What are you saying?" Quistis whispered, her expression enough to tell everyone that she, like the others, already knew what Seifer was saying.

"We can't go after Rinoa - as an ally, or an enemy."

It was Squall who pronounced the final judgement, his back turned to them once more. He was leaning against the large window as if it was the only thing holding him up, his forehead and hands pressed to the glass. His right hand was clenched into a fist, giving the impression of someone on the edge of frustrated violence. Perhaps he was - no one else in the room, even Seifer, could tell.

"Why?" Xu asked, alert - ready to react on an instant's warning. The tension in the room built...and vanished with Squall's soft sigh. The brunette turned, standing at ease, reminding everyone for a second that Squall had never asked for - never wanted - the high-ranking position that had been thrust upon him. And he'd been bound by what he saw as his duty to remain as Commander when he could have stepped down - Seifer knew that much.

"At 04h00 this morning we received a message from the Shumi." Seifer wondered if the others felt any sense of guilt, listening to Squall slip so easily back into the mentality of a SeeD delivering a report to his superiors, but he doubted they even realised what the brunette was doing. After all, they had never really managed to pierce the numerous veils that concealed the true Squall - even he, Squall's knight and lover, hadn't managed that, despite his best efforts. They probably just thought that he was detaching himself from bad news, never realising that, as easily as slipping on an old pair of slippers, Squall had slipped into his old cadet personality.

"They've been monitoring magical events in the world for almost as long as their civilisation has existed." Squall continued. "And they've identified the creation of a Weapon." Only Xu, never having seen or fought a weapon, didn't immediately grasp the enormity of the brunette's words. Even so, everyone had heard the capital letter drop into place with a foreboding finality. But... The Ultima and Omega weapons had been defeated - even if the wildly exaggerated tales of how close-run the battle with Omega had been, weren't as exaggerated as many thought. The Phoenix GF had come close to achieving the status of deity after that battle. Memories were fickle though, and just as every summer of their childhood had been a golden idyll, every battle won had been a walkover, every battle survived merely 'tough'.

"So we bust the Weapon up and get Rinoa - or someone distracts the Weapon whilst someone else gets Rinoa." Zell shrugged, expression clearly one of 'how hard can it be?'.

"The Weapon is the Centra Weapon." Squall remarked, almost off-hand. Zell shrugged again, clearly not seeing the problem.

"It's the ~Island~ Chickenwuss!" Seifer burst out, tired of the way Squall was dancing around the point. "You want to go try beat a fucking ~rock~ into dust - feel free." Zell gaped, as did Quistis. Xu merely looked bewildered. "The only consolation is that no one can get to Rinoa - not even Kylari." Not yet anyway - but he wisely didn't add the false hope that they might beat Kylari in figuring out how to defeat, or outwit, the Centra Weapon.

"An Island? A Weapon? The ~whole~ Island?" Zell looked almost as bewildered as Xu, and sounded more than slightly disbelieving.

"~Yes~, Chickenwuss. The whole Island - including the 90% that you can't see. It draws its energy straight from the core of the world, meaning if you want to destroy it, you have to blow up the world. Now, maybe it's just me, but I ~like~ living, and that's gonna be hard if there's nowhere to live." Seifer huffed impatiently, watching as his sarcastic words slowly sank in. "Can't approach by sea because of tsunamis. Can't approach by air because of volcanoes. If we did make it onto the Island we'd face earthquakes, chasms opening beneath us without warning, volcanoes erupting under our feet - not to mention all the monsters we'd have to fight on a ~normal~ day." He muttered, pre-empting Zell's protests and watching with satisfaction as the blond's mouth snapped shut in irritation.

"How would Rinoa know how to make a Weapon though?" Quistis mused thoughtfully, as much thinking out loud as asking a question. "I mean, I know she saw Ultima and Omega, but an entire Island? Not exactly similar." Xu, by this point, had a fair idea of the problem.

"There must be records...somewhere." The Galbadian Commander decided. "After all, Ultemecia knew how to create Omega." It was a sound theory, and it made sense, but Seifer frowned.

"Yeah, but think, the Centra Weapon is unassailable - the Omega Weapon was avoidable..." Xu frowned, not missing the embarrassed blush that spread across Zell's face. It wasn't common knowledge that the blond had been the one to summon the Omega Weapon on the unsuspecting Squall, Irvine and Rinoa, but...there were rumours. "If Ultemecia could have made an Island Weapon she would have done - and probably sooner..." Seifer's frown deepened, and he glanced at Squall. "Edea?" He queried. Squall nodded with a sigh.

"The timing's right, and she has lived there for a long time. But the question remains - where would Edea get that sort of information?"

"Esthar's been closed off to the world for centuries..." Zell spoke slowly, following the thoughts as they unravelled in his mind. "So they won't have lost so much of their tradition, their knowledge, or their fears." Squall knew that was true from his memories of Esthar just prior to their first retreat from the world. "What if the sorceresses of Esthar were afraid that they might come under attack, and decided to create a weapon that fitted their xenophobia?"

"They'd have the resources to do it." Quistis agreed. "And if Adel had Odine and his predecessor working on it..." Everyone knew Odine's reputation for boasting. If Edea had asked, he would have told her. No one offered any objections, the loudest seal of approval the theory could receive.

"So what ~do~ we do?" Xu asked, already dimly aware of what the answer would be.

"We go after Kylari, in Galbadia."

***

Squall was thankful no one had thought to ask about the possibility of teleporting in and out. Not that it ~was~ possible - but there was another way that sorcerers could travel. The same way they could circumvent iron doors barring their path, or cell doors with iron bars... Still, even though it could be done, it could not. There was more at stake here than anyone yet realised - not the existence of the world, some form of that would continue, but the future of humanity. A long, long time ago - so long that he was the only one, with his genetic memories, who still knew the truth - a grave wrong had been done to humanity. Oh, it had been done with the best intentions of course, but still... To right that wrong and restore balance - at least temporarily - another wrong had been done to humanity, but this with no illusions as to where the road of the future would lead. Two wrongs didn't make a right, but...if the death of one person was a tragedy, whilst the death of a million people was simply a statistic, couldn't a bigger wrong, a wrong so great that no one was untouched by it, become a right?

AN:Uh... not as long as I thought... Plans for the end of this fic have taken a not-completely unexpected twist evil grin I swore I'd never do what I'm going to do as well - but you'll have to wait and find out what that is smirks  
Anyway, consider this a sort of 'teaser' for book four ;p  
RxR! 


	2. Land of the Dead

AN: Book four's plot (as far as chapters are concerned) has gone screwy and Van Halen rocks ;)  
longish chapter...gomen - could've been longer, was nearly longer, damn muses o.O

Oh yeah - review, review, review!!! No reviews equals story removed equals darn shame (imho), because it will be ~all~ of the story, not just this book.

**Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc ~ Endgame ~ Chapter Two ~ Land of the Dead**

The march into Galbadia was hard and fast, almost as if to stop anyone from thinking too hard about what they were seeing. Because what they were seeing was destruction. But with Squall setting a bruising pace at the front, the march quickly developed into a competition of sorts, with the SeeDs trying to prove to their Commander - they didn't care that he'd officially resigned, the title had stuck - that they were better than the Estharians, and the Estharians trying to prove to their President that ~they~ were better than the SeeDs. Seifer wondered if they were willingly collaborating with Squall's attempt to distract them from the charred grasslands that they were marching over. He couldn't blame them if they were.

The Galbadian army had pulled out overnight, their trail, as one would expect with an army, clear and easy to follow. But they had not sighted them in all the time they had been marching, and Seifer found that strange. No matter how early the Galbadians had pulled out, they should still have been visible somewhere ahead of them. Both the Estharians and the SeeDs had to be aware of that, but they were placing their trust in Squall.

They were placing their trust in the man who had led the small force that defeated Ultemecia, a man whose reputation, unlike many, was both deserved and earned. A man Seifer suspected was lying to them all...

***

His knight wouldn't - couldn't - keep silent for much longer, Squall knew. The blond was too intelligent to fall for the simpler diversions for long - if at all. What amazed Squall was the fact that Seifer hadn't already cornered him over his 'plans' once more - one of the reasons he had been pushing the army so hard. If, no, ~when~ the confrontation came, they had to be beyond the point of no return.

In a way - admittedly a twisted and sickly relieved sort of way - Squall was looking forwards to the coming reckoning. The final act of the unfolding drama was upon them, and, for better or worse, Seifer at least deserved to know the truth... Some of the truth anyway. No one could know all of the truth. No one could know what he really planned, because they, in their misguided humanity, would do their damndest to stop him...

***

The Trabian Black Chocobo Riders were at war - and loving every minute of it. Of course, the veterans who ~had~ seen action before weren't wasting their energy in whooping and hollering as the younger riders were, but they were just as enthusiastic in their work. This, they were confident, was an enemy they could both fight and defeat on their own terms.

The call up had begun when the message had arrived from the border patrols - Estharian refugees, sent by Squall, were pouring over the border and fleeing for safety in the Vienne mountains through Trabia Canyon - but a whole day had passed before the enemy arrived. That hadn't bothered the veterans. They ~knew~ war was a case of 'hurry up and wait'. But the younger riders and their Chocobos had fidgeted the day and night away, only to expend the rest of their energy in screaming when they ~did~ meet their foes.

Truth be told, the experienced riders were somewhat relieved when confronted with the two Blue Widows. After all, for all the machines could teleport, a Black Chocobo could turn on a gil - or take off if needs be - taking it and its rider out of the firing line before a shot could be fired. And the machines ~had~ to teleport to get around the rocky crags of the mountain.

As for the X-ATV61UEs, if machines could be frustrated, they were two extremely frustrated machines. They had not been designed to fight on mountainous terrain - although it had been hoped that they would prove manoeuvrable over rough surfaces - and neither had they been designed to fight an extremely manoeuvrable, ~single~ enemy. The first X-ATV61UE had been designed as Esthar's response to Galbadia's Black Widow, the project mothballed with the destruction of the single Galbadian prototype - Laguna was not a man to needlessly create weapons that could be turned against his own country.

Some of the scientists, however, had not shared his views, and had secretly continued the project - until the night the X-ATV61UE had suddenly vanished, the plans destroyed. But without admitting that they had continued with the project, the scientists could do nothing. Some had muttered that maybe Kiros - whom everyone suspected was Laguna's spymaster, never dreaming that Laguna didn't, in fact, have a spy network at all - had discovered what they were doing, and had taken steps to stop them. No one ever dreamed that the prototype had been stolen by a sorceress. Not that the two Blue Widows had proven very useful to Kylari.

Part of that was due to her mistrust of all things mechanical. Kylari, after all, had been born in a backwater village of Esthar, not in the technological city itself, and she had never learned to interact with even a simple terminal. Commanding the X-ATV61UEs was only possible because of their advanced voice-activated interfaces, and she certainly didn't possess the technical knowledge required to re-program the combat modes of the two machines.

If the sorceress had been thinking straight at the time, she probably wouldn't have sent the X-ATV61UEs after the Estharian refugees and the Trabians. But she had been incensed by Rinoa's abrupt turning of the tables through the creation of the Centra Weapon. So Kylari had laid and baited a trap for the sorcerer, and then she had sent the Blue Widows away - after Esthar and Trabia - whilst she considered the problem that now lay between her and victory.

***

Both Centra and Trabia were proving tough nuts to crack though, and in her anger and frustration Kylari's caution and patience were rapidly vanishing. Giving up on Centra - if the worst came to the worst Kylari knew she could kill herself and follow her powers into Rinoa, taking the sorceress and all the sorceress powers over that way - the poison sorceress turned her sights on Trabia.

The X-ATV61UEs were vastly outclassed by mobile enemies fighting individually or in groups of two and three, but since the Trabians could inflict no permanent damage, the situation was essentially a stalemate. Even the gale-force winds, whipping clouds of snow into the air and screaming around the mountains in unexpected gusts, were hindering both sides equally.

Kylari snarled down at the mountains, eyes blazing yellow as she tried to locate the Blue Widows. Finally she spotted one that had, purely by accident, managed to corner one of the Chocobo riders in a blind canyon with walls too steep to climb, and too high to fly up. She smirked, anticipating the easy kill, and as unprepared as the Blue Widow for the Trabian's reaction. Instead of waiting and attempting to dodge whatever attack the X-ATV61UE used, the Trabian charged the machine, leaping from his Chocobo at the last second and landing on the X-ATV61UE's 'back'. Kylari blinked, as stunned as the Blue Widow, as the Chocobo - which had swerved aside as its rider jumped - looped around and casually flew over the machine whilst its rider made a determined attempt to break into the 'control panel' on the top - actually a decoy. Giving up on the attack, the Trabian leapt from the Blue Widow back to his Chocobo, and the two made good their escape.

Of course, it had been blind luck that the Trabian had taken the exact actions he had. Pure blind luck that he hadn't tried to jump over the Blue Widow on his Chocobo. By running towards the machine it had been forced to continually recalculate its firing trajectory, and by splitting up at point-blank range, the target selection process for multiple targets had halted the shot that would have been fatal. All pure blind luck. Kylari wondered if some higher power was trying to send her a message...

Shrugging the vague sense of foreboding off, Kylari teleported to the Blue Widow's side before it left in search of other prey. Anger returning with a rush, she was oblivious to everything except the orders she was giving...

***

Two things brought the combined army's furious march to a halt. The first was the lack of light as the unnaturally early night began to fall. The second was a message from Balamb Garden, itself relaying a message from Trabia. It seemed that, far from awaiting them in Galbadia, Kylari had let them chase after her shadow, and had gone after Trabia and the Estharian refugees instead.

Squall received the news in stoic silence, as everyone expected, and despite the despondent mutterings of the Estharians, they had, in the end, agreed that the brunette was right - they could do nothing until there was light enough to march by. Seifer, however, wasn't fooled. Squall had been genuinely surprised by the message.

Of course, that didn't necessarily mean that he was surprised to hear of Kylari's presence in Trabia. It might, and Seifer had a suspicion that it was more likely, to mean that Squall was surprised to get a message from Trabia telling him she was there. Truth be told, Seifer had suspected Galbadia might be a fool's quest, but he wasn't naive enough to think that Kylari wouldn't have drawn the majority of their remaining fighters out ~somehow~. Galbadia was as good a place as any to be drawn, and if the X-ATV61UEs were on the other side of the world...well, so much the better as far as he was concerned.

Still, as he and Squall turned in for the night, Seifer couldn't shake the feeling that Galbadia was somehow ~more~ than the simple wild Chocobo chase it seemed. And he couldn't help but wonder, where Squall was getting all his energy from...

***

The Trabian didn't know what sixth sense had warned him that hanging around the canyon where he'd been cornered might be a good idea. But he did know that his hunches often paid off - such as his daring escape only minutes earlier. So when the sorceress appeared next to the Blue Widow, he didn't know whether it was fate, luck, or the will of the gods that he was there, and he had a radio. But he did know that he was going to disregard the order to keep well away from the sorceress.

She was patently unaware of his presence - or completely unconcerned, but he was certain that wasn't the case - and that ~wasn't~, he knew, something that was going to happen twice. So he waited, and watched as the Blue Widow vanished. And he waited, and listened as another rider reported that the other Blue Widow had vanished. And at that moment he realised, it didn't matter what he did here - whether he continued to watch and wait, or whether he seized the opportunity and attacked - the sorceress had come to take things into her own hands. She had already removed her own forces from the firing line, and that meant she could do ~anything~ to them.

His Chocobo exploded into motion at the slightest touch of his heels to its sides, the canyon walls blurring as it demonstrated exactly why it's name was 'Shadowlight'. The sorceress was caught completely off-guard, but he didn't expect to live to boast of the fact. Swiftly he drew the shortbow - considered an archaic and useless weapon by those who didn't know it's capabilities and versatility - and fired a single iron-tipped arrow just as the sorceress retaliated...

***

The Trabian Chocobo Rider came from nowhere, exploding from the snow like a dark spectre of death, come to carry her away. The shock and confusion held Kylari immobile for barely a second, but the rider's Chocobo seemed possessed of unearthly speed, and in that second they had closed to the point where the rider was drawing back the string of a shortbow, arrow nocked and aim steady, even as his Chocobo bounded across the snow.

It was the sight of the bow that brought her back to her senses. Lip curling in contempt - what use was a ~bow~ against her, a sorceress, after all? - Kylari raised her arm, hand glowing as the fire spell took shape. She didn't bother with a shield, not seeing the arrow as her fireball hurtled outwards, engulfing the black Chocobo and it's rider.

Twin screams echoed through the mountain peaks, twisted and distorted by the wind, but somehow not lost in the gale's own shriek. One scream was definitely animal - the Chocobo, Shadowlight, calling it's agony as it burned to death in the sorceress's spell. The other scream was definitely human, but it was not Shadowlight's rider screaming in pain - he, fragile human that he was, had mercifully died in the instant the fireball struck. No, the second scream was one of pain and outrage - and disbelief. The second scream was Kylari's.

She couldn't understand, for a moment, what was happening. She had cast the fireball at the Chocobo and it's rider, but her laughter as they burned had become a scream as ~something~ struck her in the shoulder. The pain was unbearable, or rather, the indignity of the situation was unbearable. It didn't matter that there were no live witnesses to her predicament - in her mind Kylari knew the dead were sniggering at her weakness. The wind suddenly seemed alive with their voices, their laughter, and though she knew it was both irrational and pointless, she nonetheless screamed at it to be silent. It ignored her, the low moaning laughter rising to a crescendo of high-pitched giggling.

Shoving the pain to the back of her mind - a trick she had learned the hard way in her childhood - Kylari did her best to examine the wound. It seemed, though it galled her to admit it, that she had been lucky - although it didn't look it considering that there was an arrow clean through her left shoulder. Lucky, most likely, that the rider's aim ~hadn't~ been as steady as it looked - he had missed the intended target of her heart.

Carefully, using magic to break the arrow's shaft, Kylari manipulated the arrow free, discovering that it was a slim, armour-piercing tip, and that the arrow itself had, nigh on miraculously, managed to pass through the small gap between clavicle and shoulder-blade. Left arm dangling uselessly, Kylari took a moment to curse the discoverer of iron and the metal itself. Her powers were not particularly suited to healing, and certainly not an iron-inflicted wound.

Anger demanding release, Kylari didn't have to look far to find a target. As the voices of the dead, that she had imagined she could hear on the wind, had laughed, so she too began to laugh, ignoring the blood running down her arm and dripping onto the snow. She laughed at the dead voices on the wind, hearing them quaver as the rocks ripped their certainties to shreds, laughed as the poison mist began to rise around her, immediately caught and carried by the gale. The dead would carry the Trabian's deaths to them wherever they sought to hide from her...

***

"Elder."

"Scholar." Even in what they knew was a time of crisis, the Shumi remained true to their formal and measured lives and traditions.

"I have found the weakness." Of course, the Shumi Elder mused, whilst the short-lived humans might spend most of their lives in panic, it meant they were able to respond swiftly and - usually - effectively in a true crisis. Initiative was neither a common nor an encouraged trait in the Shumi.

"Have you notified the Gardens?" The Elder asked, already knowing the answer.

"No Elder. I shall do so." The Shumi Scholar turned away without hurry, and slowly left the Elder's chamber.

The shadows in the chamber flickered as the lights began to sway gently, resonating to the vibrations of an earthquake - or some more sinister event - somewhere in the world. The Elder's Moomba companion squeaked in alarm and looked up at him, wide-eyed, for reassurance. Gently the Elder folded his enormous hand around the much smaller paw of the Moomba, but he wasn't really certain whether he was giving or seeking comfort...

***

Kylari's vicious plan had worked - to an extent. As she had discovered when she had caught the glimmering of life in three places where it should not have been. Three Chocobo forests, two in Trabia, and one on Winter Island. Somehow - and she suspected the involvement of the Chicobo GF - those three places had remained untouched by the wind borne poison, those sheltering within their bounds safe from harm.

Not, Kylari scowled in a twisted parody of a smile, completely safe though. Hindered by the winds, but using the infuriating pulse of life as a beacon, Kylari appeared in the skies above the Roaming Chocobo forest. The gale whipped at her, managing only to steal the drops of blood still running from her shoulder, as she raised a hand, summoning not a meteor storm, but a single large meteor.

The rock, itself the size of the forest, hit it's target before anyone realised what was happening. Not that they would have had any options if they ~had~ known. Not with the green haze of Kylari's poison plastered around the forest's boundaries like a deadly fence. The dust of the impact was swiftly blown away, revealing the devastation visited on the corner of the country. The mountains had soaked up the impact to the West and slightly to the South, but North and East, all the way to the coast, the snow was gone, boiled away by the heat of the impact. The meteor itself had hit at a slight angle, and now nestled, partially buried in the earth at the foot of the mountains. The mountains themselves were no longer completely snow-clad, the meteor having melted the snow almost half way up the steep slopes. Soon though, as the meteor cooled in the icy air, nature would take over and turn the area back into a snowy wasteland - just as if nothing had ever grown there, and the meteor had fallen a thousand years ago.

Kylari sneered as an avalanche high up one of the mountains began the process of reclamation. Nature might be able to heal a petty injury such as that, but she would defeat nature totally in the end. With a cackle of mad laughter, Kylari vanished, only to appear over the narrow channel separating Trabia from Winter Island. This time she did cast Meteor, laughing insanely as the rocks pounded the countries below. She never noticed that the wind pulled her mad shrieks into its own howl, distorting and blending the sound into a banshee's deadly dirge.

***

The lights had barely ceased their gentle rocking when an audible boom and heavy shockwave sent them into frenzied movements once more. The bombardment was close this time - too close for comfort, and too soon after the Scholar's unhurried departure for the Elder to believe, realistically, that the message had been gotten out. The Moomba, whose paw still lay within his own great hand, trembled and whined softly at each new crash, it's fur becoming damp with a light fear-sweat.

The Elder could neither do nor say anything that might be of comfort, his thoughts scattering with the flickering shadows in the chamber. Dimly he realised that Kylari had to be pounding somewhere nearby - the Chocobo forest? - with meteors, then a final ringing crash came, loud enough to have been directly overhead, and both the chamber and the Shumi village were plunged into darkness.

The darkness was scant hindrance for either Shumi or Moomba once their eyes had adapted, and the Elder, followed by his companion, were at the door of the chamber when the backup generators finally kicked in. Artificial lights flickered in the 'sky', but the 'sun' remained only as bright as the 'moon'. Substantial damage had been done, whether intentionally or not. The Elder didn't care about that, for now. He could see the Scholar - moving with much more haste now - heading towards him.

"Elder - the relays, destroyed!" The Scholar gasped, sounding outraged. "We could not get the message through..." He admitted, somewhat shame-faced. The Elder nodded. He had known the instant he had seen the Scholar's pensive expression that they had failed. Silently he dismissed the other Shumi, and then, with a resigned shrug, the Elder turned back into the darkened chamber. The sorcerer would just have to figure it out alone.

The Elder never thought to question the Scholar's turn of phrase, and no one suspected that ~someone~ had received the message...

***

Sleep hadn't come easily for Seifer. Not that all the reasons for that were bad, he mused, feeling Squall stir slightly against his chest. The blond muted his emotions slightly as he frowned, not wanting to wake the brunette with his thoughts. Squall had distracted him - not unpleasantly, not unpleasantly at all - from his musings early in the evening on where the brunette was getting his energy. But now, having surprised an answer out of his sorcerer whilst the brunette's thoughts were too scattered to attempt a bluff or deflection, Seifer was glumly certain of at least two things. The only living creatures in Galbadia were the soldiers and SeeDs of the combined army - and they were here to die...

AN:>< I kindly asked the muses to stop fiddling with my nicely planned timeline, and what do they do? They go and give me insomnia *glares* Not only that, but they've now started a cascade effect, so I, for one, won't be entirely surprised if this 'book' ends up as 13 chapters and ~Hyne~ knows how many epilogues o.O  
Shadowlight, so named because (this'll sound familiar if you know Terry Pratchett's Discworld books), light is the fastest moving thing known to man, but! The darkness/shadows is/are always there waiting for it! Ergo, Shadowlight - a Chocobo as fast as darkness. Well, made sense to me o.O Incidentally (and nothing to do with the fic), Shadowlight has a brother (Shadowwind) and two sisters (Darklight and Darkwind). Shadowwind is the oldest, then Darklight, Shadowlight, and Darkwind is the youngest. 


	3. Against the Odds

AN: Muses are thoroughly irritating creatures - give them an inch, they'll take a mile *glares*

**Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc ~ Endgame ~ Chapter Three ~ Against the Odds**

Seifer was still awake when Squall stirred at his side. He didn't bother to try and feign sleep, knowing, as he did, that Squall had already caught a betraying wisp of thought - too organised for a dreamer's idle musing. Neither did the blond knight try and prevent the brunette from extricating himself from the blankets and dressing. He did, however, let his curiosity rise to the front of his mind - surely Squall didn't intend to start marching again already?

"I'm going to see whether the sentries are all still awake." Squall replied, not looking at his knight whilst he concentrated on fastening his belts and checking the ammunition pouches that clipped around his right thigh.

Seifer waited until the brunette was out of the tent and half way across the camp before he allowed himself to wonder why Squall was going in person...

***

The sentries were all awake - more out of fear than because of their duty - but as Seifer was starting to suspect back in the tent, the sentries weren't the reason - or not the only reason - for Squall's early rising.

The previous night, as the camp was being organised, Squall had 'toured the pickets' - in reality setting up his own wards around the camp, far out from the sentries actual positions. The activation of those wards was what had woken him, from a sleep so guarded that it had been dreamless.

"Stand easy." The sentry jumped slightly at Squall's voice, but the brunette had deliberately approached at an oblique angle from the camp's heart. Both the approach and the warning were standard procedure - unless you really wanted to run the risk of being a casualty of friendly fire.

"Sir." The sentry saluted, relaxing into an 'at ease' position as Squall motioned for her to do so. "All quiet sir." It was almost a question, but not quite, and Squall, for the moment, ignored it. He was scanning the darkness beyond with narrowed eyes, seeing far more than the sentry could ever hope to without the aid of night-sight binoculars.

"Go sound the alarm." Squall ordered quietly, freezing as he spotted the first movements in the darkness beyond and judged the distance to be right. The SeeD scrambled, omitting formal acknowledgement of the order in her haste. Seconds later the alarms - a sequence of whistle blasts for the SeeDs, a yodelling cry for the Estharians - sounded across the camp, stirring it into a mass of activity.

Despite the semi-serious rivalry between the SeeDs and the Estharian soldiers, they both knew when ~not~ to waste their energy on such a trivial thing as showing off - especially since their Commander/President seemed oblivious to their efforts. But if Squall had expected Kylari's army to attack whilst his own threw themselves out of disorganised sleep and into organised defensive positions, he was proven wrong. Wary of the presence of a sorcerer - the ultimate predator in the grey lands - Kylari's army hung back and waited as the combined army made ready and waited for an attack.

The combined army were on edge as the sun finally began to lighten the sky, almost three hours after the alarm had been called. But nothing could have prepared them for the sight that confronted them - an army of creatures that consisted only of mist and shadow.

Their opponents were clearly neither human nor native monster, for the faint sunlight passed through their bodies, emerging on the other side somehow, tainted - as if the light itself had been corrupted. The closest many of the soldiers had ever seen before were the thin Creeps, which infested most sewers. But the Creeps were merely paper-thin monsters made mostly of muscle, and with very little 'intelligence'. They held none of the concentrated malice of these creatures.

Unfortunately, and most importantly, only Seifer or Squall could hit them and deal permanent - never mind terminal - damage. Like the nether-ghouls summoned by Kylari - a few of which were scattered amongst the larger creatures towards the back - all the shadow creatures were purely magical, whilst impervious to 'living' magic, until they consumed enough living flesh to become 'living' themselves.

_ Seifer commented. Squall simply nodded, muttering under his breath and frowning fiercely in concentration. The brunette raised his arms, his hands cradling a blue sphere that crackled and sparked like a ball of lightning, and Seifer was suddenly aware of the heavy pull as Squall drew as much power as he could. Then, for one horrifying moment, as the pull stopped and Seifer staggered, and the blue sphere broke, it's light flooding over the camp, the blond thought the worst - that Squall was murdering his own forces..._

But the only visible effect was the way in which each soldier, and their weapons and ammunition, took on a faint blue-white aura.

He began, hurrying to support Squall as the sorcerer slumped.

"Some...of my...power." The brunette rasped out, allowing his knight to take most of his slight weight. "They can...fight." Seifer was almost overwhelmed by the wave of sheer exhaustion that came from the brunette, and by his own sudden guilt. He cradled Squall's limp - only sleeping - body in his arms, and headed back behind the relative safety of the army's defensive line. Seifer was ashamed for doubting Squall's intentions, but...he couldn't help but think that, for whatever reasons of his own, Squall had merely granted them a reprieve...

***

Everyone at Fisherman's Horizon had thanked Hyne when the dawn - late and dim as it was - arrived alone. They weren't stupid, and the majority had figured out already, from rumours and other sources, that they were suddenly unprotected on one flank and that the army were unlikely to be able to effect a rescue like the first. Some were resigned, most were determined to sell their lives for as high a price as possible. Still, there was a general relaxation as the light revealed nothing visibly amiss.

It was, perhaps, only the few injured SeeD veterans and those in command who weren't surprised, almost an hour later, when the Galbadian army reappeared...on ~both~ horizons.

***

"...get mines out ASAP. I know they won't hold them up any..." Quistis listened almost absently as Zell explained the battle plan to Xu. All three of them knew that, if any of them were going to survive, it would be Xu, in command of Galbadia Garden's defence. They had at least three hours in which to prepare, and following the alarms that both the G-Garden and Balamb Garden had sounded most people were already at their stations. That meant three hours in which the enemy would be gaining a slow psychological advantage...

Not that the enemy needed more of a psychological advantage, as Xu well knew. It was only the refugees and SeeDs from Balamb who hadn't actually seen the possessed soldiers fighting, and the rumours and tales they ~would~ have heard dwelt mainly on Squall and Seifer's timely arrival with Estharian reinforcements. Not for the first time Xu wondered why, when he had demonstrated that he could do it, Squall hadn't destroyed the bridge and tracks on both sides of FH...

"...can't be more than three quarters of the Galbadian Army left..."

"What about the Galbadian population?" Xu interrupted morosely, causing Zell to gape in confusion for a moment.

"You think she conscripted everyone?" Quistis asked, horrified, her imagination already providing a too vivid image of ordinary women and children zombified and walking into deathtraps set by those who should have protected them in the first place. Xu shrugged.

"We have to consider that possibility." Zell grimaced, his thoughts running in a similar vein as his wife's. Black humour raised it's head for a moment as he envisioned the holy terror that was 'angry woman with frying pan', and he raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, absently concealing the grim quirk of his lips until he could control his features once more.

"So we set the charges for remote detonation. Two squads of the fastest runners and they can act as front-line grenadiers with whatever spellstones we have. They go, say, five hundred metres out, hold there as long as possible, pull back a hundred, hold and so on. The charges can be used to hold the Galbadians off their backs whilst they retreat. Two squads of those with the highest GF compatibilities who start summoning in sequence as soon as the Galbadians are in range." Zell paused and gave a wry grin. "And the rest split into three groups, two frontline defence, and one reserve - but we'll hope we don't need them eh?"

The two women nodded wholehearted agreement, all three of them well aware that they were not only likely to need them, but likely to be relying on their determination to do as much damage as possible before dying. If, Hyne forbid, their morale failed and they gave in, the Galbadians would sweep across FH like a tsunami - and with as little mercy.

"And what if one of those things...those..." Xu struggled to remember the word. "Nether ghouls? Attacks?" Zell shrugged, expression clearly one of 'then we're fucked'.

"There's got to be something that we can fight them with." Quistis mused out loud, speaking barely above a whisper. There ~had~ to be something...they had to ~believe~ there was something, because, if there wasn't... "Squall - he'd know." Xu and Zell shared a glance that immediately informed Quistis that they too had thought of that - and that something was wrong.

"We've been trying to contact them since the Galbadians were spotted." Zell admitted. "All we've been getting in return is static..." Quistis suddenly felt hollow, gutted, as if her world had been turned upside down and inside out. Squall and Seifer...the army...they ~couldn't~ be... "...doesn't mean they aren't getting our messages, just that we aren't getting theirs." Zell finished, unaware that Quistis was barely aware of what he was saying.

"...Quis..." Xu began, interrupted by the sound of the terminal behind her beeping. A message...

Quistis reacted first, desperate as she now was for confirmation that her worst nightmare was just that, distressing but unreal. Hope, joy and confusion passed across her face before she settled on confused disbelief. Xu and Zell waited...and waited...and...

"A...~digital~ GF..." The blonde muttered faintly. And promptly fainted.

***

It was almost impossible to knock on the side of a tent, but the messenger tried his best. Seifer, reacting more to the shiver that ran through the canvas than to any sound made, left his post watching over his resting sorcerer and went to see what the teenager wanted. Behind him, Squall stirred.

***

"Army surrounded, will try to break out to aid you, chances of success low." Xu muttered, reading the message that had caused Quistis to faint. She frowned, glancing around to where Zell was trying to wake his wife up. "Nothing to explain why she took it so hard - or what she muttered." Zell sighed slightly in relief as Quistis moaned and began to stir.

"Sounded like 'digital' from where I was standing..." He frowned, suddenly wondering... "That 'static' we've been getting - it's all ones and zeros, right?" Xu nodded, comprehension dawning.

"You think it's a message in binary?" She nodded thoughtfully. "One of the technicians ~did~ mention that she thought it was repeating... But why would they signal us in ~binary~?" Zell shrugged.

"Maybe Squall knows something we don't." It was Quistis who spoke, in a tone of voice that was more than suggesting. Her expression was dark, and she sounded angrily certain that Squall was playing his own games.

"Quis?" Zell queried, slightly worried by his wife's behaviour. He wasn't the only one. As unobtrusively as possible, Xu worked her hand towards the alarm button beneath the terminal desk...

"He's had a GF, a ~digital~ GF in the Garden's network for Hyne knows how long." She sounded torn between raging anger and tears of hurt and betrayal. "The 'static' ~is~ a message...and I know what it says..." Her voice trailed off into a whisper. Xu and Zell exchanged worried glances, but Xu's hand crept away from the alarm button once more. The screen on Zell's left began to display the 'static'.

'000001010000110110110001111110001100001111100001001010101000111100011001111' it displayed, completely impassive to the plea. '000000111101100001011111011000111000010001010101010000100111101101000101111111000010001110101110000000110100111110001100111000011001110110010100110000111' continued the unreadable advice. The pattern restarted, printing itself again and again, the screen beginning to scroll as the text extended.

"Uh...anyone fluent in binary?" Zell queried aloud, not really expecting an answer.

>The text approximates to 'please forgive me go down fighting'

Zell yelped his alarm and jumped away from the words on the terminal screen.

"The...it...~spoke~ to me!" He looked at Xu, remaining wide eyed as the shock became realisation. "The digital GF." His voice was quieter now - he and Quistis shared a resigned glance, both aware of the message and it's meaning. Silently Zell moved aside so that Xu could read the GF's translation and come to the same shattering conclusion. Squall had abandoned them to their fate - and that fate was death.

AN: Poking a muse with a pointy stick is good for getting results...except when said muse decides to snatch said stick and poke back... *hides*  
The idea of a digital GF is accepted with little comment because, whilst they've always been told such a thing isn't possible, they've also always been told that there's no such thing as a 'sorcerer' - and look who's a sorcerer! Seifer, on the other hand, had Squall emphatically tell him that such a thing isn't possible, so Squall, Quistis, Xu and Zell are the only ones who know about Ansiko.  
Also, the binary is ~not~ random, it is actually a message *grins* - it's constructed using the Huffman Algorithm, and if you want to spend some time decoding it (no I'm not doing the hard work for you!) the probabilities are listed below. Please don't - if you do decode it - spoil things by revealing what it says in a review, you can e-mail me and ask if you got it right, but since it ~is~ a spoiler for events even closer to the end, don't post, k?

Letter : frequency  
A : 6.22  
B : 1.32  
C : 3.11  
D : 2.97  
E : 10.53  
F : 1.68  
G : 1.65  
H : 3.63  
I : 6.14  
J : 0.06  
K : 0.31  
L : 3.07  
M : 2.48  
N : 5.73  
O : 6.06  
P : 1.89  
Q : 0.10  
R : 5.87  
S : 5.81  
T : 7.68  
U : 2.27  
V : 0.70  
W : 1.13  
X : 0.25  
Y : 1.07  
Z : 0.06  
Space : 18.21


	4. Degeneration

AN: So, the truth begins to come out o~o Just whose side - if any - is Squall really on?

**Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc ~ Endgame ~ Chapter Four ~ Degeneration**

They told no one, assured by the digital GF - Ansiko - that the 'static' the communications technicians were looking at was just that - meaningless static. Yet, somehow, the SeeDs seemed to know that their deaths were merely a matter of time.

Maybe it was because that was how SeeDs viewed all confrontations - as their last - until it was over, and they were still alive - or proven right. Maybe it was because their leaders - although putting up a brave front - seemed to be lost in worlds of their own, to be found frowning at nothing. Or maybe it was just an instinctive knowledge that, this time, the odds truly were overwhelming.

One hundred SeeDs - including the wounded and those cadets with enough weapons training to be useful - against over a million unfeeling, silent zombie warriors. And whatever else Kylari chose to throw at them.

Had their foe been mortal, been human, with hopes and dreams, longings and fears, then the SeeDs might - just might - have been able to hold out. Until their ammunition ran out anyway. But Kylari's Infestant soldiers, whether a former soldier, housewife or even child, would, ~could~ do nothing but march blindly forwards. They didn't even ~see~ the corpses they marched over, much less care about them. They didn't flinch in pain, and they had no fear of death. They simply walked forwards, always forwards, remorseless, inhuman.

And, however courageous, the SeeDs ~were~ human. They flinched in pain, in fear, and they didn't want to die. But they did their best, and they held their positions, making the enemy pay dearly for every inch of ground.

Xu could barely refrain from weeping - she cast her spells with a fierce pride, honoured to be one of those elite known as 'SeeD', but knowing that, when the time came, she would be one of the few who might stand a chance of surviving. At least for another day.

Zell too was bursting with pride, bursting to the point that he was bouncing all over the place. Far from distracting the SeeDs, he was enthusing them, almost as if he was taking his own pride and feeding it back to them, lifting their hearts and spirits and even causing some to dare consider that, maybe, just maybe, they ~could~ do this.

And Quistis... Quistis had left the other two to be proud of the SeeDs fighting so valiantly. She was fury incarnate where she stood with the other SeeDs assigned summoning duty. Fury because she was so proud of the fight the SeeDs were putting up - SeeDs whom Squall had deliberately abandoned. But it was a cold, calculating fury - enough to send the Infestants running in terror had they known and been allowed to do so - because she knew that, when the time came, Zell would stay in Fisherman's Horizon and then Balamb Garden, but he would order her - and expect her to obey - to retreat with the civilians in Galbadia Garden.

***

The final pieces were falling into place Squall thought, staring at the roof of the tent without really seeing it. His final message to Quistis and Zell - and whomever they chose to share it with - had been delivered nearly two and a half hours ago by Ansiko. It didn't matter what response Seifer had sent, it would never reach anyone thanks to Ansiko's subtle jamming of the Garden's communications systems.

The 'official' response he'd sent was simple, and, whether they believed it or not, the truth. Even with his help, Kylari's shadow army was simply there to keep them penned in - but they would exploit any weak spot. That meant they couldn't send their full force against the forces between them and the railway bridge, because they had to keep at least a token force on guard at their rear, whereas the shadow army had the advantage of numbers and also only needed a token force in the rear to keep them trapped.

Not that he had told anyone the real reason behind his not fighting. He had put on a performance for Seifer's benefit, trying to stagger out of the tent and towards the fighting - deliberately making himself appear weaker and wearier than he really was. He suppressed a snigger. Half the army had nearly diverted it's aims from forcing a path through Kylari's army to forcing ~him~ back to his tent.

The smirk on his face turned sour. He didn't like what he was doing, but with Ellone's death he had become acutely aware of something. The consequences of failing to go through with his plans - of trying to cheat fate, or destiny, or whatever you called it - would be far, far worse than seeing it through to the end...even if, ultimately, he failed.

***

It was frustrating in the extreme. Kylari glared at the Centra Weapon's innocuous looking shores in fury, as if hoping that she could cow it into submission. Somewhat rashly she had attempted to make a direct assault on the tower herself, trusting on her powers to shield and protect her from the Weapon long enough to get to it's core - Rinoa. Humiliatingly she had been forced to retreat before she was even halfway to the tower - which had moved to the center of the Island from it's former seaside resting place. Or maybe it hadn't moved at all. Maybe the Centra Weapon had simply raised the level of the land that had been below sea level.

Either way, Kylari was frustrated and angry, and more than ready to take that anger out on something. At least, she could console herself, the army - along with the Sorcerer and his knight - were trapped in Galbadia, and her Infestants should nearly be finished with Fisherman's Horizon and those who opposed her there.

With a last glower at the Island, Kylari decided to finish off Fisherman's Horizon personally...

***

The Infestants were actually being held at a stalemate when Kylari appeared in the skies overhead. Although they possessed greater numbers and knew no fear, the SeeDs and other human fighters had gotten into a rhythm of killing that no longer faltered when children of nine and ten walked blindly towards them, and they were driven to protect those who could not fight. The Infestants unthinking forward motion had also meant that they took no time to clear away the dead, simply clambering forwards over them. It was slowing their advance, and had also, gradually, built up into a defensive wall that they had to climb over to get to the SeeDs beyond. Very few were making it over the wall.

Of course, it was sheltering them from the staggered magic attacks, so the fighters were relying on those with ranged weapons - mainly guns. But with no snipers left to them, they were relying on the ragged volley fire of six or seven guns to kill three or four Infestants, and the fighters ~didn't~ have unlimited ammunition.

Kylari's appearance - not unnoticed since they had the cadets and junior classmen posted as lookouts to shout warnings when she turned up - heralded the end. The SeeD defences appeared to collapse inwards, parting in the middle as they fell back to their assigned Gardens. The manoeuvre was performed so smoothly that Kylari might have thought it choreographed and practised a hundred times with exactly these soldiers, but in reality it was simply the smooth efficiency of SeeD discipline. SeeD discipline which she had failed to break, and which now screamed at her 'we may die, but we'll die as SeeDs'.

Kylari, through her anger, felt a brief flash of respect for the competence displayed below, but that quickly vanished beneath her fury once more. Efficient, disciplined and competent they might be - but ~she~ was the one with the power. ~She~ was the one they ~should~ be quailing in fear of. And they were not...

***

Zell watched in relief as Xu escorted Quistis to Galbadia Garden. He knew his wife wouldn't want to go, but if it meant she might survive - even for a short while longer than he - then he was willing to pay any price. That was why he had persuaded Xu to make sure that she actually went. He was ~not~ a fool - if Quistis had thought she could get away with it she would have hidden herself in Balamb Garden. That he could see her under the firm guidance of Xu - he turned away reluctantly and headed towards Balamb Garden - meant that she had resigned herself to his plan.

***

"So...you wanna drop the disguise spell now?" Xu asked, letting go of 'Quistis' arm once they had passed the Galbadia Garden entrance. 'Quistis' glare broke, morphing into the terrified, but defiant, features of a tall brunette SeeD whom Xu instantly recognised.

"How did you know?" Colin - better known as Trepe Groupie #1 - asked with a sigh. Without the disguise spell there couldn't have been anyone who resembled Quistis less. The only thing the two shared was their height. Xu snorted.

"Please - don't insult my intelligence. I knew Quistis long before you dreamed up her 'fan club'. Oh, you could pass for her at a distance - which was what she was counting on - but up close, with someone who knows her?" Xu shook her head. "Not a chance."

"You're gonna tell Zell, aren't you." Colin's shoulders slumped in defeat. Xu sighed, looking over the barriers at nothing - a mannerism all the SeeDs had come to recognise in their three leaders.

"No." She sighed again. "I disagreed with Zell's decision anyway, Quistis knew that." Colin was frowning in confusion. "He doesn't realise..." She swallowed and shook her head, as if throwing off a bad memory. "They should be together." Xu stated firmly. "And never more so than at the end." She seemed to realise just how indiscreet she was being - and to an 'elevated cadet' SeeD at that - and fixed him with a glare. Colin simply nodded.

***

Whatever Kylari had planned for them, Zell thought morosely, she was not about to let them get their defences up by calling off her Infestants. Maybe she planned to see how long they could last now that all their advantages, except determination and courage, had been taken away. And if that ~wasn't~ her plan...well, Trabia had demonstrated how much protection a Garden was against a pissed off sorceress.

Faintly he could hear the warning klaxons of Galbadia Garden as it prepared to take off. With a soft sigh, he breathed the Garden's parting salute - knowing that Quistis, like everyone else, would follow it to the letter. Kylari would never be able to boast that she had forced SeeD into submission.

Turning, he surveyed the SeeDs scattered in the center circle. The entire circle was open now, not even a raised center thanks to the GFs. It was a killing ground - if their enemy walked blindly forwards and didn't fan out to attack all the aisles at the same time. There was no reason to suspect they would change their modus operandi, not with a decoy force to lure them into the trap. Of course if Kylari had other plans - such as unleashing the X-ATV61UEs on them - then they were fucked without question.

He nodded with approval upon seeing the spreading yellow glow of Aura spells, then turned sharply back to the entrance as the decoy team opened fire.

***

Quistis sighed with relief as her husband's gaze passed over her without note. Not that it was so surprising, looking, as she did, like someone completely different - Colin, as it happened, who had taken her place on Galbadia Garden. She felt no remorse for the deception, knowing that her place was ~here~, backing her husband up. With a grim smile, she prayed to Hyne that Kylari sent an X-ATV61UE, because this time - unlike in Centra - her Degenerator limit thrummed throughout her body, waiting to be unleashed...

***

Zell was embroiled in the fighting at the gate when the X-ATV61UE appeared in the center circle. Like those fighting with him, he was completely - and blissfully - unaware of the danger suddenly behind him...

***

Quistis had dropped the disguise spell as soon as Zell had entered the melee at the front gate, no longer needing protection from a random examination of the massed and waiting SeeDs. When the X-ATV61UE materialised in the middle of the Garden - clearly having scanned and found a large enough area for it to appear - she did three things...

She threw a quick thank you to Hyne for answering her prayer.

She let out a triumphant, blood-chilling scream.

And, whilst the X-ATV61UE was still looking confused - insofar as a machine could look confused - she unleashed her Degenerator limit break.

The machine vanished in a somewhat anti-climatic shower of black sparks. There was stunned silence and then, someone across the Garden began to chant...

***

The Infestants at the front gate seemed to falter, and began to fall back, milling in confusion as Kylari's concentration was shattered by the destruction of the X-ATV61UE that she hadn't even ~sent~ to attack the SeeDs. Over the silence of the Infestants retreat - which the SeeDs were too exhausted to pursue - the growing chant could easily be heard.

"QUISTIS, QUISTIS, QUISTIS!"

Zell turned, incredulous, hoping and yet fearing to hope, longing and suddenly realising that maybe she had been right to want to be with him in this last, vain stand.

Husband and wife reunited in the middle of the Garden, and the chant swelled with pride as they embraced, becoming a scream of defiance and triumph that reached Kylari, high in the sky, taunting her.

"QUISTIS AND ZELL! QUISTIS AND ZELL! QUISTIS AND ZELL!"

Enraged beyond words, Kylari screeched the incantation of the strongest sorcerer spell she had been able to learn...

The Hellball engulfed Fisherman's Horizon and Balamb Garden without mercy, except, perhaps, that it was a quick death.

When the fire and smoke cleared, Balamb Garden was gone without a trace. Fisherman's Horizon, which had grown up around the railway bridge over the decades, was gone too, not even a scorch mark or smouldering puddle of melted metal to suggest there had ever been anything there but the bridge. The bridge, which, against all odds, still stood there, as intact as the day it had been crafted by sorcerers and sorceresses working together to join the continents.

***

Only Xu and Colin saw the explosion of the Hellball from the G-Garden's bridge - everyone else watched from wherever they could, not knowing what they could expect, and, when the explosion came, not knowing what had happened. No one really cared whether Balamb Garden had destroyed itself to take as many of the Infestants with it as it could, or whether Kylari had simply annihilated the Garden and FH in one fell swoop. Most believed the latter, but all knew that their comrades would have gone down fighting.

Up on the bridge Xu could no longer control her tears. As she broke down and sobbed, Colin cautiously wrapped his arms around her, and reflected that maybe, just maybe, Quistis Trepe wasn't the only female SeeD Instructor who deserved adoration.

Xu buried her head in the cadet's shoulder, letting her grief out and her guard down in a way she had not permitted herself to do around others for years. All she could think of was Quistis - one particular moment in the Cafeteria where the blonde had been animatedly describing Ultemecia's castle and the fear it had sent shivering through her spine. Ultemecia, Xu thought, had built her great castle in the sky because of her dreams - dreams SeeD had brought crashing down. Kylari too sought ultimate power, but she sought it with her feet firmly on the ground, and this time it was SeeD who was being brought crashing down to earth in their floating Gardens. SeeD and their dreams of protecting the world from sorceresses who threatened it.

They were going to lose.

***

Squall started as Ansiko fizzled into appearance in the tent. He hadn't expected Kylari to finish with Fisherman's Horizon so quickly. Still, it wasn't as if, at this point, he needed to draw things out any longer. Now was as good a time as any to reach the final turning point.

"Report." He asked the GF softly, sensing Seifer making his way towards the tent.

"Quistis got one of the X-ATV61UEs." Squall chuckled at the news, suddenly understanding why Kylari had finished so quickly. Quistis had dealt the sorceress a nasty blow to the most painful place of all - the ego. One of her 'indestructible' machines had been destroyed.

"Good for her." His lips twisted in a grim smile. "Anything else?"

"Xu managed to get Galbadia Garden away before Kylari struck. The sorceress does not seem interested in pursuit." The smile became a frown for a moment, then Squall shrugged. It didn't really matter. Xu would either try and reach him - in which case they would be killed by the outer edges of the shadow army - or she would head for the Deep Sea Research Center, and the death which waited them there.

"Squall I..." Seifer's words cut off as he spotted the GF. His expression hardened, soured, and Squall knew the turning point was upon him. "I think you need to start telling me the truth." The blond amended, glaring, hurt, at his sorcerer. "What the ~fuck~ is going on?"

Squall smiled, somewhat sadly.

"I agree." Seifer blinked, expecting more of an argument before Squall offered anything. "Seifer, meet the GF Ansiko - and no, you're not dreaming."

AN: Hehehe - and the title of the next chapter is 'Death by Volcanic Seifer', or maybe it should be 'Volcanic (K)night' *sniggers* nah, just kidding, it will have a sensible title ;)


	5. Breaking Point

AN: Heh - ~this~ chapter is gonna be fu~un...well, for me at least ;p

Kitty-Chan, UchiNaru no Miko: hee, long live the X-AM0S! Hope you're still enjoying the story :)

**Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc ~ Endgame ~ Chapter Five ~ Breaking Point**

"Seifer, meet the GF Ansiko - and no, you're not dreaming."

***

Seifer blinked once...twice...

The GF was still there...

Squall's words still resounded in his head...

***

He was...well, he wasn't sure ~what~ he was. Except maybe a trusting, naive, ~fool~. A fool to think that Squall had given in so easily with his promise of not closing off the bond between them. He should've known - if only because Ultemecia had demonstrated the ability - that the bond's emotions could be manipulated. But he hadn't wanted to believe it. Not of Squall.

Squall whom, he had always thought, had never told a lie in his life. Ha! He hadn't even considered - not until after Ellone had died, and then not seriously - that Squall might have been concealing some ulterior, personal motive for everything that had happened. But it made sense. After all, by concealing the fact that he was a sorcerer, Squall had been living a life that was, itself, one big lie - made up of Hyne knew how many smaller lies.

His mind raced. Squall had ~wanted~ to be caught out, there was no doubting that. The brunette would've sensed him returning to the tent in plenty of time to have dismissed Ansiko. Which meant...what? That Squall was finally tired of playing games with his trust? That he was finally ready to reveal what was going on - and what he intended to do?

"I wasn't dreaming." Seifer settled for stating, blankly, the expression of anger fading into stony flatness, and then, inexorably, falling into lines of despairing confusion as the blond struggled to find a reason - any reason - for everything.

"Not then." Squall confirmed softly, dismissing Ansiko with a wave and a thought. "Not then." He repeated, looking away from his knight and fiddling absently with the blanket of the camp bed he was sitting on.

"Not then." Seifer repeated, idly musing that they must sound like a scratched record. "Then when? When was I dreaming? When did the dreams end?" Squall didn't look at him, instead studying the side of the tent as if the answers were written there.

"The Garden Infirmary." Squall answered slowly, as if checking his own memory - or his knight's - for details. "I don't know how long you were gone before Dr Kadowaki called to say you'd gone." He shrugged. "More than long enough to talk to Ansiko and come to my office." His expression darkened. "Ansiko ~wasn't~ supposed to reveal herself. She was just supposed to convince you that you should be my knight. When you mentioned her by name...I didn't have a choice!" The brunette's voice rose in remembered anxiety. "I ~had~ to know how much she'd told you..."

"So you..." He couldn't say it. Not yet. He could understand that Squall, faced with such a situation, had panicked. After all, aside from never actually getting to state that yes, he was willing to be the brunette's knight, and leaving aside the mental collapse, things had turned out as planned.

Squall was nodding anyway, as if he'd heard the words the blond had been going to say.

"Yes." He glanced up at Seifer, his eyes darkened by some unfathomable emotion. There was a long silence.

"So..." Seifer asked, letting out a long sigh and taking a couple of steps closer to where Squall sat, leaving the space between the brunette and the tent flaps clear as he did so, but not noticing. "How do we break though these bastards and get back to FH?" Grimly certain that the worst was over - surely it ~had~ to be over - the infamous Almasy smirk made it's appearance.

"There is no FH. Not anymore. Balamb Garden and Fisherman's Horizon are ~gone~." Seifer reeled mentally at Squall's cold response. "Besides, we're not here to win any victories - you already know that." The blond breathed in a harsh gasp of air, his own expression turning as cold as Squall's voice.

"Maybe. I'd hoped I'd heard you wrong." The brunette chuckled, a harsh sound totally devoid of humour.

"No, you heard me right - although I'm surprised you could hear my response over the sound of your moans." Seifer visibly flinched, Squall's comment echoing and distorting in his mind.

***FLASHBACK START***

She cooed into his mind as he gently wiped them both clean of their releases. 

For a moment he was frozen, shocked and confused by her venomous words...

***FLASHBACK END***

"You frigid bastard..." Seifer hissed, suddenly and thoroughly insenced. The words that hadn't, in the chill anger earlier, been spoken, rose like bile in his throat as the red heat of his fury swelled. "Hyne..." Seifer hissed again, shaking his head and glaring daggers at his sorcerer. "I don't know why I thought I loved you - you're ~just~ like Ultemecia!" Seconds later his brain caught up with his mouth, and he realised what he had said...and what he could not, now, unsay.

Squall looked...impassive...as he stood and strode across the tent - almost as if he had expected the barb.

Maybe he had...

"If that's how you feel...goodbye Seifer." The brunette half-turned at the tent flaps. "Whether you believe it or not, I'll always love you."

With that he was gone, outside the tent and teleported to Hyne knew where.

***

Slowly Seifer drew back his hand, outstretched in supplication after the brunette. He hadn't even been aware of making the gesture, and if Squall had seen it, he had ignored it. Angrily Seifer dashed away the wetness on his cheeks - the heat and the argument were making him sweat, that was all. Seifer Almasy did ~not~ cry...not even in situations like this.

A determined frown settled across his features as he slowly turned away from the tent's exit. He could sense Squall's presence, and that meant the brunette hadn't gone too far - almost as if he ~wanted~ someone to pursue him.

Well, far be it from him to deny what the last sorcerer - ~his~ sorcerer - wanted, Seifer thought bitterly. Of course, he could be wrong in thinking that the brunette wanted his knight to come after him. After all, he'd thought that Squall had allowed himself to be caught because he was ready to explain, and look where ~that~ had gotten them...

Still, he knew Squall well enough - or thought he did anyway - to know that the words that had passed between them were, in a sense, foreplay. Whether it led to another argument, a fight, or a reconciliation between them...well, he'd only find out if he picked up the metaphorical gauntlet Squall had cast in leaving, but leaving a trail behind. It was up to him now, Seifer knew, to decide whether he really wanted to find out what was festering beneath the brunette's outer calm...

***

The sudden rippling of the tent's wall - the closest approximation to a knock one could manage on stretched canvas - jolted Seifer out of his thoughts. He had no idea how long he'd been staring at nothing, but as he roughly scrubbed a hand across his face and felt the dampness of sweat - not tears, never tears - he knew it wasn't long. Cautiously the SeeD second in command - a personable young man who seemed genuinely liked by all - stuck his head into the tent.

"Uh...Seifer?" The blond in question looked up at him, still slightly out of it. "You, uh...you and Squall...everything ok?" Blue eyes, open and honest in their worry - not like ~his~ - stared at him, pleading for a positive answer, but, more than that, demanding an honest answer. Slowly Seifer shook his head, not trusting his voice - the argument had made it hoarse, that was all, nothing else. "Oh. Uh, anything we can do?" Again the blond shook his head. The - currently - green-haired SeeD's eyes tightened in concern, but he nodded and began to withdraw from the tent.

"Wait." The SeeD stopped at Seifer's quiet command. "Balamb Garden and FH are gone, pull the fighters back into the defensive circle of the camp." There was a pause.

"What of Galbadia Garden?"

"I don't know." Seifer admitted, looking away. "Squall..." He stopped - he didn't know what to say, that was all, his voice was fine. "...didn't say." He finished after a deep breath - indegestion, stitch maybe, that was the pain that had flashed across his chest, nothing major, not heartache...he had no heart left to ache...or break. There was a long silence.

"Seifer..." He looked back at the SeeD as the man quietly called him, seeing in his eyes compassion and understanding. "We know we don't stand a chance, with or without Squall." He held a hand up, halting Seifer's automatic protest. "But he's given us the ability to go down fighting, and whoever's will it is that we die here, Hyne's, the sorceress's, even Squall's...we won't forget that." Seifer blinked suddenly moist eyes, making a mental note that a dead Galbadia was a dusty Galbadia - nothing to do with the SeeD's words, ~nothing~. "Go to him." The SeeD ordered softly. "Go to him and find your resolution - we've already found ours."

"And what if I don't want to...to find out the truth?" His voice cracked - he couldn't help it - but he already knew that he was going. He ~had~ to go. One way or the other, he had to know what was really going on, whether he had been played for a fool - the way that Ultemecia had - or whether Squall, as was his wont, had been trying to protect everyone - including his knight - from a truth that was too painful to bear. The SeeD's lips quirked in a grin, sensing the change in Seifer's demeanour.

"Then I'd ask who the hell you were, and what you'd done with Seifer Almasy, Sorcerer's Knight." He answered with a chuckle, withdrawing from the tent before the blond could call him on the manner of address.

***

Seifer stared for a moment, not really believing what he'd heard. After all these years, after everything he'd been through, had he finally achieved his dream? Hope and confidence surged through him. Damn straight he was the Sorcerer's Knight, and right now said sorcerer damned well owed him an explanation - or a thousand!

AN: Hee, fun *grins and then frowns* except that I'm not, now, sure whether all the bits I wanted to explain are going to get explained...grr... Ah well, we'll see. Be warned, if I do decide that it's all going to get explained it will a) be a verrrry long chapter, and it will also be either flashback or dialogue heavy - or both *grimaces*


	6. A Fatal Ray of Hope

AN: And this would be the looong chapter I warned you about *smirks*   
Updated: Corrected a slight error, Norg resided in the basement level of Balamb Garden, not Galbadia Garden *blushes*

**Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc ~ Endgame ~ Chapter Six ~ A Fatal Ray of Hope**

How long had it been since Balamb Garden's - and Fisherman's Horizon's - destruction? Xu didn't know, didn't ~want~ to know. The pain she had felt, seeing the bright flare of destruction on the horizon, had faded to a dull ache under the weight of her new responsibilities. She had to get the Garden to safety.

The knowledge that, in all likelihood, Squall had expected - maybe even wanted - them all to die, had been buried deep in her subconscious - her mind forgetting a truth too horrible for sanity in a desperate bid for survival.

Still, Xu might not have retained even an outward appearance of composure had Colin not been at her side, as he had so often hovered - unnoticed and unnecessary - near Quistis. The blonde he so adored had never, really, needed his silent support, but Xu...

Xu had been raised believing that a woman had to work twice as hard, be twice as good and be half as emotional as a man, in order to be respected by men. Even Garden and SeeD had not managed to dispel her belief. But Colin's simple gesture, after she had broken down and cried on his shoulder, whilst not dispelling the beliefs she still harboured, had planted the seed of hope that maybe some men weren't like that.

That hope and Colin's presence - supportive, but in no way threatening her authority - were all that was keeping her going.

Unfortunately it didn't change one essential fact. They couldn't get to the army in Galbadia.

***

Kylari stared at the bridge, barely seeing it as she struggled to hold her multiple personalities together in the backlash of the spell. A backlash that she had neither expected nor been able to defend against. Still, as she recovered her composure, and closed her eyes, relaxing her mind to ride the magical currents of the world, she was not dissatisfied at what she found.

Balamb Garden and Fisherman's Horizon were gone - albeit along with the remainder of the Infestant army and one of her X-ATV61UEs.

Esthar was once more a wasteland populated only by monsters and the occasional Chocobo.

Trabia was devoid of all life, the poison gasses she had called still lingering, potent, across the snowfields, mountains and forests.

The Chocobo forests of the north - all three of them - were crushed beneath summoned meteors, and the Shumi had been sealed within their underground village by the same process - the X-ATV61UEs having eliminated the surviving Shumi before, for some reason, one had appeared and been destroyed by the SeeDs.

The Sorcerer, his knight and his army, were trapped in Galbadia - a burnt wasteland now - by her shadow army, ready to be crushed whenever she saw fit.

Galbadia Garden had escaped the destruction at Fisherman's Horizon, but it could not reach Galbadia with the winds blowing as they were, and that left it only one place to dock - the Deep Sea Research Centre. There was a suitable welcome waiting for them, if they made it there.

All that remained was for her to find a way to defeat or suborn the Centra Weapon, and to take the full sorceress powers from Rinoa. And for that, Kylari reasoned, she might be able to use the remaining Blue Widow's teleportation powers. Which meant that all she had to do, was find it...

***

The news spread through the camp like wildfire, like any other rumour. Only this one, this terrible one, was true. Squall had gone, and now his knight, mounted on a fearsome, quicksilver dragon, was also leaving.

Some felt it was a betrayal, though they could not say what it was a betrayal of. Soldiers and SeeDs alike - all of whom now knew that Balamb Garden and Fisherman's Horizon were lost - already felt the sharp sting of failure, the sickening wonder that perhaps they had not quite given their all. That perhaps they ~could~ have broken through the monsters surrounding them. That maybe it was they who had betrayed their fellows...

Others clung to the hope that Squall and Seifer were leaving only to bring back help of some form, for none were naive enough to consider they might somehow defeat the shadow creatures whose ranks went back beyond sight.

A few - a brave, resigned few - such as the new, green-haired SeeD commander, Stoltz, were able to reason out and face the truth. As he had told Seifer, Stoltz knew they were not coming out of the situation alive, and he also knew that it was probably just as Squall had planned. For some reason, he believed, their sacrifice was necessary, just as he believed that in giving them the ability to go down fighting, Squall had been registering his protest at such a necessity.

No one broke. At least, not on the outside. There was nowhere to run except into the waiting claws and gaping mouths of the shadow horde. So, quietly, and with the unbreakable spirit that had seen both Esthar and SeeD defeat their enemies time and time again, even when outnumbered - the spirit that had seen generation after generation of SeeDs throw themselves at Ultemecia in a determined bid to see her toppled from her throne - the soldiers accepted their fates, and settled down to wait for their last fight. And if soldiers who had never tended their weapons diligently before threatened to wear them to nothing with repeated, obsessive, cleaning, no one called them on it.

***

Squall truly hadn't gone far, merely out of sight between Obel Lake and the Roshfall Forest. He had chosen the ground deliberately, having, on a previous visit to the lake, noted that its water had a distinct taint from iron deposits in the surrounding ground. Iron deposits that would distort the perceptions of Kylari's shadow minions, and hide his presence from them.

But it did not distort his own perceptions, and he was close enough to the army's camp that he could feel the changing emotions of the soldiers as first the news of Balamb Garden and Fisherman's Horizon, and then his departure, made the rounds. Their reactions were as he had expected, but still, it sent a surge of pride and love through him. They were ~his~ soldiers, body and soul, and made that way through such a simple act as allowing them to die as soldiers should - fighting.

Sorceresses had always manipulated through bending the hearts and minds of others to their own will. Sorcerers had always known that the ~real~ way to manipulate was to understand those you wished to manipulate better than they understood themselves. That way your every action could be carried out in such a way that they would willingly put the most favourable interpretation possible on them - even to the extreme of refusing to believe when told the truth...

***

Galbadia was definitely out of the question.

Xu sighed heavily, no longer bothering to stifle her frustration from Colin's ears. She had ordered the engines of the Garden redlined in an attempt to make some - any - headway against the magic-fuelled winds, but whilst they were seemingly content to allow the Garden to maintain its latitude, they were ~not~ willing to allow them to move North. They had burned out one of the thrusters in the attempt, and whilst the Fisherman's Horizon mechanic was confident that he could fix one by the time they needed to go against the winds once more, they couldn't afford to lose any more.

The Deep Sea Research Centre was their only hope, and if they could not push against the winds long enough to dock, they were doomed. Because all the winds were blowing towards Kylari's tower. The tower that was sitting on top of the Centra Weapon...

***

Kylari ground her teeth in frustration. The destruction of one X-ATV61UE had clearly sent the other into a defensive stealth mode - one she hadn't even known existed. It was as if the machine - already difficult, but not impossible to locate - had vanished completely. Not destroyed, she would have known if the second one had been destroyed, as she had known the instant the first had been destroyed. But as far as she could sense, the machine was nowhere on the planet.

Sending out, as a final resort, a wide-ranged general summon command, Kylari folded her arms, and waited...

***

Squall didn't need to see the shining, silver streak in the sky to know that Hades was flying towards him. Just as he didn't need to see Seifer's face or body language to know that his knight was determined to know the truth - no matter who got hurt in the process. Idly he wondered if things would have been the same had their positions been reversed from the start.

"I don't care anymore. I just...if we ~are~ all going to die...I just want to know why - the ~real~ reason why." Of all the things Squall had imagined Seifer might say, that had ~not~ been high on the list. Not totally absent, but still, not high. Slowly he turned, finally facing the blond who, in purely statistical terms, was six inches taller. In reality, however, Seifer looked smaller than he ever had, his spirit diminished somehow, crushed and beaten down by the constant lies and betrayals that plagued his life. He, Squall realised, was responsible for much of that. The brunette felt an all-too-familiar stab of anguish, not relieved in the slightest by the knowledge that there was no other way.

"The reason why?" Squall asked, hating himself for drawing this out, but driven by some force he could neither identify nor counter. "What makes you think there ~is~ a reason?"

"Don't you ~dare~ try and tell me there isn't a reason Squall Leonhart!" Seifer's eyes were anguished, his voice pained and broken. "You've lied to me - and everyone else - right from the start. You ~owe~ me the truth!"

"I owe you ~nothing~." Squall's voice was hard, and cold like his glare. Suddenly though, his expression softened slightly, and he looked away from his knight. "No," he admitted softly, "that's not true. I ~do~ owe you. I owe you everything you demand of me - but I cannot do everything you would demand, and..." The brunette shook his head sharply with a sigh, as if to dispel a maudlin thought. "Very well. The truth - as much of it as I can give. Where would you have me tell it from?"

Seifer stared, still trying to understand what had just happened. He had demanded something of Squall, who had pushed back - as expected - provoking a heated, and honest, response. And then... Then Squall had suddenly, unexpectedly, backed down - even going so far as to admit that he was wrong!

"Uh...the beginning?" Seifer hesitantly offered, wondering if it had been a trick question as Squall's lips quirked up at the edges.

"The beginning?" Squall repeated, still smiling slightly. Barely noticed, memories began to scroll through his mind, memories of his ancestors, their ancestors, right back through the war against sorcerers to the times before. The times when sorcerers and sorceresses worked together, the time when one of his ancestors had been part of the sorcerous group who created the indestructable bridge between the Galbadian and Estharian continents - back when they were still the Western Provinces and the Eastern Nation respectively. Back right to the very start, when Hyne had, in a childish tantrum, given the first magic powers to her chosen 'daughters' - the first sorceresses - an action that had directly led to magic being given to chosen men - the first sorcerers - as a counterbalance, both actions directly leading to the present...and the future - if there was one.

"Well..." Seifer hesitated, obviously wondering just ~where~ in a tangle of events that made time-compression seem linear, he could define a point as being a 'beginning'.

"How about after our second fight?" Squall suggested, lightly tracing a gloved finger over first the scar marring his face, then almost suggestively over the scar on his shoulder - hidden by his jacket. Seifer licked his lips and nodded, half-lifting his hand towards his own scar.

***FLASHBACK START***

"Squall...?"

Squall looked up slowly from the mission file, unsurprised by Seifer's sudden interruption thanks to Dr Kadowaki's thoughtful warning. One of his eyebrows arched in query as the blond remained silent, but Seifer didn't seem to notice, eyes glazed and seemingly absorbed in his own musings.

Curious, the brunette quickly scanned the blond's surface thoughts, noticing with slight concern that he had already figured out there was another sorceress, ~and~ that she was seemingly following in Ultemecia's footsteps. Taking advantage of Seifer's - probably - temporary mental openness, Squall slipped a memory block on the blond's realisation.

He waited for a moment and then, when it became clear that Seifer was simply going to stand there trying to remember what he wasn't being allowed to remember, rolled his eyes in irritation and went back to the file and Ansiko.

>Certainly the pieces of the puzzle all fit. She would not care, but ~he~ would like the symmetry.  
>

Ansiko didn't answer, instead silently vanishing back into the depths of the Garden databases. Nodding to himself, Squall confirmed the mission had been accepted, and closed the file.

"You wanted something Seifer?" The brunette prompted curtly, mildly tempted to leave the blond and time how long it took for him to give up on the memory. The question made Seifer blink and automatically go to run his hand through his hair - a gesture as familiar to Squall as his own habit of putting one hand to his forehead. The blond, however, had obviously forgotten his wound, and cursed as the movement pulled the injury.

"Here." Squall threw the elixir in a gentle underhand arc, noting that Seifer paused to identify the bottle before awkwardly removing the cork and drinking the contents.

It was good that the blond was suspicious of him, Squall thought. Good, that was, for Seifer. As long as the blond didn't trust him, didn't expect him to be trustworthy, there was a chance that Seifer wouldn't be too badly hurt. But...if he did start to trust him, as he ~had~ to start to trust him... Squall wasn't sure if the blond would survive. The healing glow of the elixir - visible to Squall as a sorcerer - spread through the older SeeD, and the brunette removed the block on Seifer's thoughts.

Seifer's eyes narrowed, and he stared at Squall for a moment, ignoring the warning glare as he strode around the SeeD Commander's desk to peer at the screen. It didn't matter. Squall had already made sure that the mission file was closed. But Seifer had his suspicions, and Squall could tell from his body language that he would be damned if he was going to let them go unaired.

"Is the bitch dead or not?" He demanded acidly, remaining where he was so that Squall had both to turn and to look up at him...

***FLASHBACK END***

"...you could read my mind? I thought being Ultemecia's former knight prevented anyone from reading my mind?" Seifer asked after a moment or two of silent gaping. Squall frowned, then shrugged.

"It should have done." He admitted. "I don't know whether it was because of how she 'died', or because of how she bonded you, or some other reason, but your mental defences - at least against me - have always fluctuated." He sighed at Seifer's bemused expression. "Sometimes, when your defences are strongest, the most I can do is read the strongest of your thoughts. At their weakest it's almost as if you have no defences at all." Seifer shuddered at the implications of that, and then comprehension dawned.

"You took advantage of that fact, didn't you." Squall slowly nodded...

***FLASHBACK START***

Squall felt the fog closing around him as he stepped silently away from Seifer and Zell. He could see clearly, his vision unaffected by the magically created weather, but it was like white noise on some of his magical senses, making him blind and deaf to anything that the sorceress might have summoned. Of course, it was still more than likely that he would see or hear anything approaching long before it could attack, and purely magical creatures would find the fog far more of a hindrance than he.

Taking a deep breath, and praying that Selphie's uninjured descent of the cliff - so long ago now - hadn't just been a fluke, Squall jumped. Only a small pebble marked his departure, its rattling tumble muffled and unheard.

***

He stumbled on landing, nearly falling as a loose boulder - probably deposited by a minor landslide - moved beneath his foot. As he staggered to keep his balance, Squall stepped forwards, out of the fog and into clear air. Looking up, he could see that the mist barrier had been created with no finesse, no care that anyone seeing it might dismiss it as a natural phenomenon. If Squad B had made it this far - although personally he didn't think they had - they would have had no doubts as to the foe awaiting them.

Still glaring up at the tower where the sorceress waited, Squall cast his mind back into the fog, searching for Seifer's mind. Fortunately the magic of the fog didn't seem to have boosted the blond's erratic mental defences, and Squall was easily able to infiltrate his mind, ready to plant the images that would ensure Seifer's willing - and unwitting - collaboration in the sorceress's deception. A deception that was as much for the sake of the rest of the world as it was for the sorceress.

The sorceress, Squall had quickly realised, had two options. She did not know for sure whether he was the sorcerer or not, so she had to force him into a position where she believed he had no choice but to demonstrably use his powers - being unable to detect them herself - or die. What she didn't - hopefully - expect, was for him to do neither. She couldn't afford to let him attack her with his powers backing him up undetectably, in essence, with his sword, but also she couldn't afford to commit herself before she was sure that she was the more powerful. That, he had concluded, coupled with the location she had chosen for her appearance, meant she was going to try throwing him from the tower, forcing him to fly, levitate, or die on the rocks below.

Of course, if she had believed his reputation as a 'lone wolf', she would not have planned for his companions, and if she hadn't, well, she was still unlikely to have considered that he would not only bring Seifer Almasy with him, but have based his entire escape plan on the blond. That was his gamble in this ultimate-stakes game. Now all he had to do was pull it off...

The image was potent, guaranteed to cause an impulsive action from Seifer, but not necessarily a useful one. That would take a subtler manipulation of the blond's thoughts...

***FLASHBACK END***

There was a long pause. Seifer refused to meet Squall's eyes, clearly trying to reconcile what he had believed, and what he now knew. Squall wondered which would win, the truth that Seifer, in his blind loyalty, had concocted, or the truth that was the truth...

"A deception for the world." Seifer finally stated, still not meeting Squall's eyes. "Could you have defeated her - there and then?" He looked up, and this time it was Squall who couldn't meet his knight's eyes.

"Yes..." He whispered.

***FLASHBACK START***

He could feel her strength this close, could feel the terrible truth that he could not defeat her without surrendering completely to his powers. Either she had knight somewhere already, or she had taken the powers of another sorceress...

...or he ~wasn't~ feeling what he thought he was...

As he split his concentration, part going to cast the firaga spell, part going to summon Eden, a third part probed and reassessed the power he could feel - and see as a red mist - emanating from the sorceress. It throbbed, seeming to move with almost a tidal motion - the waves of one layer echoing the movements of another in a cascade motion. That was the key, Squall realised, to the puzzle. The other sorceress's mind was a maelstrom of previous personalities, both weak and strong, but each of those personalities still retained a faint shadow, an echo, of the power that was common to them all. The strength that he could feel was the sorceress's strength, multiplied by however many personalities she still harboured within her mind.

He released the firaga spell as Eden responded to his summons, unsurprised when the sorceress laughed and the fireball died at his fingertips. Even as Eden appeared, and the sorceress twisted space, deflecting Eden's attack harmlessly to one side, Squall was unsurprised. It seemed she was bluffing, unable to sense his strength, and trying to hold back from revealing her own - unaware that he could sense it easily, now he knew what he was looking for. She was pathetically weak.

But she wasn't so confident that she was going to let him close with Lionhart - the gunblade blazing blue with modifications that she probably believed to be sorcerous in nature. That was all to the good. He wanted her confident that she could commit the atrocities that would be her vengeance, but not so confident that events moved too fast. On the other hand, letting her be cautioned by the failure of her plans would prevent her from assuming too many liberties, but letting slip that he was stronger - strong enough to know at least some of her plans and motivations in the short term - might make her too cautious. He wanted, ~needed~, her to be a big and obvious target - that came and went from nowhere - not some back-alley murderess, or some scheming political voice. She was the frying-pan out of which the world would eventually jump - straight into his fire.

***FLASHBACK END***

Squall carefully *didn't* mention the spell - whose purpose he still had not discerned - that she had cast on him before gleefully using an ultima spell to throw him off the Communications Tower.

Glancing up, he noted that Seifer's eyes were slightly glazed, his expression slightly pained. It was one thing to demand the truth, Squall knew, and quite another to swallow and accept it.

Soon, the voice in his mind whispered. Soon it would all be over. It would all be over, for better or worse, and... But things were never that simple. There was always something else that had to be done. Always something else that someone thought only ~he~ could deal with.

"You could have beaten her then..." Seifer stated listlessly. Squall nodded, watching his knight watching him. "You could have prevented all of this." He stated in the same tone of voice. Squall nodded again, his gaze searching deep within his knight's eyes just as his mind searched through the blond's mind and soul. Searching, seeking for the core of resistance that ~was~ Seifer. Searching for the one part of the blond that kept him coming back, time and time again, challenging Ultemecia's fate, challenging his own fate...challenging his sorcerer's fate.

"I could." Squall stated, deliberately making the comment nonchalant, off-hand, uncaring. To his sorcerous senses Seifer suddenly blazed crimson, the blond's temper snapping violently.

"You could have saved them all!" He screamed, whipping Hyperion from it's scabbard and cleaving through the air in front of him in emphasis. "You fought so hard to save them all from Ultemecia, from ~me~ - so why the fuck did you condemn everyone ~this~ time!" He took a step closer. "WHY!"

Hyperion slammed into the ground mere inches away from Squall's feet, the blade propelled so fiercely that barely two feet of it were left in sight. The brunette didn't flinch, didn't even tense in readiness to react.

"Of course, the deception didn't end there." Squall continued, completely ignoring the outburst, although inside he was both pleased to have provoked it, and saddened at what he was slowly doing to his knight. In the end, an end, it would leave Seifer stronger than ever, but the process...

***FLASHBACK START***

Squall saw X-ATV61UE crumple in defeat, and beyond it, saw Seifer, suddenly bereft of Gilgamesh's presence, beginning to fall. Without conscious thought or effort, he was there, next to the blond, just in time to catch the older man before he hit the ground.

Seifer was pale, very pale, and Squall felt a pang of remorse for what he was going to put the blond through. Gilgamesh had been nothing more than a ruse - and an expensive one at that, creating two X-ATV61UEs that he would have to find ~some~ way of defeating. But the ruse, as with the ruse for the sorceress's benefit, had been necessary. Kylari now saw him as weaker, but not unable to cause problems to any large-scale plans, and Seifer was unconscious, unable to protest being used to sweep the path ahead for mental traps the sorceress might have left.

Had there been another way, any way - within reason - he would've spared the blond the trauma, but there wasn't, not if he wanted to completely waste all the time and effort he had spent convincing Kylari that he ~wasn't~ as strong as she feared, by casting a high-level spell that would destroy any mental traps and immediately warn her that he was, in fact, stronger than she was.

Frowning, Squall gently lowered the blond to the ground, running a hand lightly down his cheek as he did so. There was no magic involved, but the slight flicker of the blond's closed eyes was enough to reassure Squall that the older man would recover given time. Time that would be spent in dreams of reality, and would see Seifer's mental strength tested to the limit.

Without thinking, Squall scooped Seifer into his arms, and lifted him off the ground. He suddenly realised that Zell was there, watching, witnessing what should have been impossible. Impossible and inexplicable - except for the Eden GF, to whom he could attribute the necessary extra strength.

The best course of action in these situations, he had often found, was not to try and explain, but to simply continue as if there were nothing ~to~ explain. Accordingly, he left Zell gaping behind him - sensing when the gaping turned to the two 'halves' of the X-ATV61UE - and headed down the mountain.

He hadn't gotten far when he crossed the mental trap, or rather, when he pushed Seifer into the mental trap - the only one he had detected. The blond began to twitch and shudder in his arms, his body and mind sensing that something unnatural had occurred, but as the spell wove itself in and around his unconscious mind, the blond stilled, accepting it as a dream. That, Squall knew, was just the beginning of the spell.

It was really quite low-level, as mental traps went. Probably because Kylari hadn't been certain who would activate it. All it would do was loop over and over, with different variations of how its scenario could play out. Sorcerers had once used the very same spell in negotiations, allowing each side to see the possible consequences of their actions. Kylari hadn't even set it up to broadcast useful information back to her.

A few yards further on, and Zell came pounding up behind him, broadcasting his worries about the X-ATV61UE almost loud enough for Kylari to hear - had she been listening. The sorceress, Squall could tell, was long gone. No doubt moved on to the next part of her plan - whatever that was.

It didn't really matter what the sorceress had planned. Strings were being pulled by puppet-master entities far greater than them. All they could do was dance, and maybe, by dancing in the direction they were supposed to, gain enough slack in their strings to, possibly, challenge a single detail of their fated ends. Of course, there was always the risk that, by gathering slack in the strings, they might just hang themselves instead. But that was an acceptable risk, and even if it wasn't, it was still a risk they had to take.

As for him - Squall knew that he too had to begin putting his plans into motion. Kylari's trap had unwittingly prepared Seifer for Ansiko to lead into the idea of becoming a knight - this time for a sorcerer. Zell would no doubt remember that he had been promised an explanation, but one would never be forthcoming. Not whilst he lived anyway. And to complete the deception...

A sacrifice would have to be made...

***FLASHBACK END***

"Trabia..." Squall whispered, turning away from Seifer. If he feared the blond's reaction to hearing that Trabia's destruction had been coldly calculated, a deliberate sacrifice, he didn't need to. Not yet, anyway. Seifer was stunned by one revelation only.

"You..." The blond gasped, stricken. "You ~deliberately~ ensnared me in her trap. Why?" He demanded, no longer demanding, but pleading, as if realising that he probably ~didn't~ want to know the truth any more. As if pitifully hoping that this would all turn out to be a nightmare.

"Why?" Seifer demanded again after a long pause. This time his anger was back, full force. "So you could break my mind and rape my soul - like Ultemecia!" Squall whirled, his expression and voice anguished.

"I came ~this~ close to losing you!" He gestured, thumb and forefinger nearly touching. "You can't ~imagine~ how scared I was that I'd lose you forever." Seifer shook his head sadly.

"You're right. I can't. Just as ~you~ can't imagine how betrayed and used ~I~ feel." The blond reached out, easily tugging Hyperion free of the ground before absently checking the blade for dents and returning it to its sheath. "Now, are you going to tell me the rest of it?" Squall sighed and nodded, relieved that his knight had passed the test. "And stop trying to push my buttons." The blond added. "I'll make my ~own~ mind up."

***

They had, thank Hyne, made it to the DSRC.

Xu patted the engineer from Fisherman's Horizon on the back gratefully. The man had worked miracles at the end, coaxing the engines to give their utmost, holding the Garden in place just long enough to moor it securely against the side of the DSRC. Now, of course, he was disconsolately mourning the heaps of melted slag that those final efforts had reduced the engines to. The Garden wouldn't move under it's own power again until someone built and installed completely new engines. At the moment that looked like never.

Still, they had made it to a safe haven - however temporarily.

Xu frowned as sound echoed around the damaged MD level. A group of SeeDs had approached her earlier, mentioning that they could - or thought they could - hear strange noises coming from the Centre itself, and asking for permission to investigate. She had given it, entertaining the vague hope that maybe Bahamut had returned on Quistis' death, but now she thought about it, they'd been gone an awfully long time...

"Have we heard anything from the SeeDs who went out a while back?" She asked, hearing the light footfall behind her that she instinctively knew was Colin's. There was a pause whilst another series of noises echoed around the level - a deep, rumbling noise followed by several thin, reedy cries.

"I think we just did..." Colin replied, paling slightly. They exchanged a worried glance, before Xu began yelling orders to evacuate the MD level and get everyone back into the central - and most easily defended - area of the Garden. Colin silently called on his GF, asking it to create a barrier around the damaged sections where the Garden's structure was weakest and most vulnerable.

The sound of people leaving the MD level died away, leaving Xu and Colin in silence once more. Complete silence, in which their breathing sounded unnaturally loud.

"Where do you think it'll break through?" Xu whispered, unable to overcome the feeling that the creature - whatever it was - could hear them no matter how quiet they tried to be. Colin shrugged uneasily, feeling the same sensation make the hair on the back of his neck bristle.

"At a guess - down here. I think it's too large to break through to the surface." He didn't know how or why he thought that, but somehow Colin knew that what he said was the truth. Had Squall been there he might have been able to explain how Quistis and Colin had danced to their fates so well that, in the end, they had changed their destinies. Colin had been fated to die in Balamb Garden, cut down by the flickering lasers of the X-ATV61UE, whilst Quistis, grieving over Zell's death, remained in Galbadia Garden. The world was still adjusting to the change, Colin's soul much nearer the land of the dead than was normal, giving the cadet insights and perceptions normally hidden from those still alive.

"So it'll be fighting upwards - maybe that'll give us a workable advantage..." He could tell by Xu's tone of voice that she didn't really believe it.

"Go." He whispered, laying his hand on her shoulder. "I'll buy you as much time as I can." Xu's eyes widened.

"But...you don't have ~any~ offensive GFs..." Colin smiled sadly.

"No, I don't. Those SeeDs did though, and look how long they lasted." It was a valid point, and Xu had to concede it. That, though, didn't mean she had to like it.

"Still..." Colin cut her off with a kiss, pulling her into a tight embrace.

"I'm expendable - I'm just a cadet after all. Besides, if I can buy you some time here, you can prepare a decent welcome for it." He whispered into her ear, before turning her away and pushing her towards the stairs. Xu stumbled a couple of steps, then half turned back towards him, eyes brimming with tears.

"You're not 'just' ~anything~." She cried. "And I love you!" With that the tears began to stream down her face. Half-blinded by them, Xu ran up the stairs and out of the MD level, sealing the door behind her.

Slightly stunned by Xu's revelation, Colin stared at the closed door for a moment, not really seeing it. Then he chuckled and turned towards the thinnest part of the MD level's walls.

"Guess there's nothing like an imminent death to make brave men out of cowards." He muttered, unsheathing his sword and holding the blade horizontally in front of his eyes. A mighty crash resounded through the structure of the Garden, the wall buckling slightly under the impact of the creature beyond. Colin bared his teeth - the expression in no way a smile - and began summoning his GF again.

As the wall finally began to split open, he dropped to a fighting crouch, gesturing with his free hand at the small head and long, sinuous neck that poked through the opening. "Bring it on." He taunted, laughing as the creature attempted to draw back - only to find the metal had closed back around it's neck, trapping it. Still laughing, Colin darted forwards, surprised when his sword passed easily through the creature's neck and severed it's head.

He was beginning to wonder if the SeeDs had simply been caught off-guard, when the neck-stump began to bubble and flow outwards - forming two new heads. Now the monster seemed to be laughing, both mouths gaping, tongues flopping in dark amusement.

"Come attack me again little mortal." The heads seemed to be saying to him. "Come make me even stronger, even more dangerous." Colin snarled at it's challenge, but held his ground. If he could only hold it here long enough, perhaps Xu and the others would attack in such force when it did break through that it would be killed anyway.

As if sensing his determination and resolution - and disappointed by it - the monster moved beyond the wall, whatever body and appendages that were hidden going to work on breaking down the barrier between it and its prey once more. The wall crumbled depressingly fast now that the creature had both incentive - the puny mortal who dared face it alone - and a crack upon which to work. Soon Colin was able to see the rest of the creature Kylari had summoned and left for them to find.

It was not unaware of his scrutiny, and paused, arching it's four necks and five heads proudly above its large, dragon-like body and legs. Four feathery wings were folded tightly to it's back, the feathers dull, yet at the same time with a glossy sheen. Movement in the darkness at it's back suggested that either the creature's body was longer than it looked, or it had a tail receding into the darkness - or both. There was no immediately visible vulnerable spot, nothing that shouted 'I'll die if you hit me here'.

Colin swallowed, and tried to pull himself a bit taller. Once again he began to summon his GF, hoping that he could, indeed, hold off the creature long enough for Xu and the others to be able to make a good account of themselves...

***

Patience was ~not~ Kylari's strong point at the best of times, and this was anything but the best of times. An hour of waiting, frustratedly pacing back and forth, killing anything that ventured into sight, and she was nigh on ready to simply dismantle the X-ATV61UE when it appeared... Except that she didn't know ~how~ to dismantle it without creating a multitude more.

Still, as she hovered on the verge of giving up and returning to the problem of reaching Rinoa in Centra, there was a sudden sense of completeness, a sense that something which she hadn't noticed being absent had suddenly returned. Frowning, she concentrated, searching the world for what had changed.

Slowly a grin spread across her face. Opening her eyes, Kylari tipped her head back and laughed at the skies. Then she reached out the X-ATV61UE, once again visible to her senses, and summoned it to her side...

***

"There's no incoherency in my memories." Seifer looked unsurprised at the soft admission. "I wish there were...but there isn't. I know every detail of what the Kenthra did in their 'noble' efforts to eliminate every last trace of the sorcerers. I know every detail of the atrocities that were ~praised~ by the sorceresses as being for the good of the world." Seifer thought for a moment that Squall might spit in his derision and anger, but the brunette restrained himself, instead shaking his head sadly before taking a deep breath and continuing.

"The sorcerous powers are passed to every child of a sorcerer, male or female, hence how they can seem to disappear and 'skip' generations. They will never manifest fully in a female - although sometimes, like Ellone, a minor variant strain of magical ability manifests itself - and only begin to manifest in a male as the previous sorcerer of that line approaches death or dies. That manifestation can be anything from instantaneous to nearly fifteen years." Seifer wondered which it had really been for Squall, but kept silent.

"The powers build up over the years because the death rate is slightly higher than the birth rate - the world is slowly dying. A sorcerer will always have gained a certain level of strength before the powers 'mature' - an event signalled by the release of the genetic memories. That's the most crucial point for a sorcerer - if they're going to be found, that's the most likely time - since the revelations of over a millennia of memories - including the atrocities of the Kenthra and the persecution by the sorceresses - inevitably causes a massive psychological change." It slowly began to dawn on Seifer when, exactly, Squall's powers had matured.

"I was fortunate...in a way. Ellone left just as my powers matured - it meant no one looked beyond that for an explanation for my sudden change in behaviour." Seifer nodded quietly to himself as Squall confirmed his suspicions. "The powers didn't physically start to manifest themselves until much later, at which point the sorcerer before me - himself dying of cancer - tracked me down. I...think he was my great uncle - on Raine's side, gods forbid that Laguna might ever have been a sorcerer! - but I'm really not sure. He hadn't had any contact with his family since the day he'd discovered ~he~ was a sorcerer, so all he really knew was that we were related somehow. He explained how the GFs would aid me, and how Griever - the legendary leonine GF - had given our line of sorcerers a special amulet, a pendant that would safely channel away the excess powers that threatened to give us away. He also warned me that he believed me to be the last sorcerer of the last line of sorcerers - although he wouldn't tell me why he believed it - and that there was likely going to come a day when the pendant was of no use. He urged me to start thinking very hard about finding a knight - whether male or female - whom I could trust with my life." A faint smile twisted Squall's mouth upwards. "I didn't have to think very hard. I knew my knight even then - even when some upstart sorceress tried to steal him." Seifer blinked.

"That, ~you~, were the reason I fought Ultemecia. ~You~ were the reason I never gave up. The reason I never stopped." He sighed softly. "You knew it too, deep down where Ultemecia couldn't reach, even after she broke your mind in an effort to find out what you were subconsciously hiding from even yourself. But I could always see it."

"But..." Seifer began, forehead creasing into a frown of confusion. Squall's lips twitched, and he held up a hand, forestalling the question.

"Sorcerers have been in hiding for thousands of years. Only our ability to read minds so much better than any sorceress saved us. And that ability has been honed, generation after generation. Is it really so surprising that we can read the surface thoughts of ~everyone~ when we had no other way of telling friend from foe, and a mistake would be fatal not only for the sorcerer, but anyone associated with them? We ~had~ to be the best, because anything less was death. Oh, sorceresses could tell if we attempted to read their minds, and some people could sense that ~something~ odd was happening, even if they didn't know what. But where sorceresses could read nothing, we could read something, and where they could read something, we could always read that little bit more." The slightly smug expression on Squall's face faded and he looked away.

"But that meant we always carried that extra burden on our shoulders. And when we finally needed knights as well as the GFs, we could sense things that our knights could not, and what we could sense we did not want to burden them with. So we learned how to manipulate the sorceress/knight bond that we had stolen, and we learned to lie to our other halves - as we could not lie to ourselves." There was a long pause.

"You tried to make me the innocent actor you ~couldn't~ be." Seifer realised. "You tried to keep me in the dark so that you could believe in ~my~ lies, hiding behind them from the truth you didn't want to face." Squall nodded.

"And in the end I realised what every other sorcerer who tried the same thing realised. There is no escaping - not for us. We are bound to our destiny with strings as fine as cobweb, and stronger than adamantine." His shoulders bowed in defeat, Squall fell silent again. "I don't know what else to tell you." He finally admitted. "There's so much..."

"Then, let me ask some questions." Squall nodded. "You said that being a sorcerer just increased your compatibility with GFs, there's got to be more to it than that." Squall chuckled slightly.

"There's compatibility, and cooperation. Compatibility is a measure of cooperation - right? The higher the compatibility, the greater the cooperation. A sorcerer has the power to lay a geas on a GF, forcing them to obey, but long ago sorcerers reached an agreement with all the GFs. As long as the GFs didn't refuse to cooperate to the extent where a geas was necessary, no sorcerer would lay a geas on a GF. Thus they will not refuse my requests without a very good reason. ~that's~ the ultimate cooperation, and thus, the ultimate compatibility."

"Huh." Seifer remarked, looking impressed despite himself. "Handy. So what other useful powers do you have that you haven't taken the time to tell me about?" Squall looked thoughtful for a moment.

"Well... There's the whole division of sorcerer and sorceress powers. Since they came from two different sources, the powers draw on two different planes. Sorceresses draw from the living world, whilst sorcerers draw from the world of the dead. That's why our powers have increased over time whilst the sorceresses powers have actually decreased over time - the world is dying."

"Hold on." Seifer interrupted, frowning. "If the sorceresses powers have decreased, how fucking strong were they way back when? Because Ultemecia seemed pretty fucking strong to me." Squall nodded, his expression serious.

"Ultemecia was strong. But, 'way back when' there were far more sorceresses - each of them capable of defeating Ultemecia. As their powers have diluted, they have re-concentrated them to an extent by combining multiple powers into single sorceresses. The number of sorcerers matched the number of sorceresses, but they had less power, until the sorceresses began killing them, forcing the powers to increase in strength with the generations. The sorceresses are, and have always been, their own worst enemies." He shrugged. "The idea of 'native' and 'non-native' powers was supposed to force interdependence between the sorcerers and sorceresses, and for a while it did. Until some sorceresses began experimenting and creating things such as the book Kylari has."

"You mean the book she ~had~." Seifer interrupted again. Squall shook his head.

"I thought it was too easy at the time. The book I got rid of was simply a decoy, a successful one." He added ruefully. "I dismissed the wrongness I could feel as she created her Infestant army as just another symptom of the magical imbalance. It wasn't until we fought the Nether Ghouls at Fisherman's Horizon that I realised she still had the book - the ~real~ book." He shook his head. "That's the point of non-native spells - a sorceress simply cannot learn the complex incantations they require to perform a sorcerer's spell, just as a sorcerer must use complex incantations or a GF to perform a sorceress's spell."

"Fortunately the sorceresses only ever managed to mimic the minor sorcerer spells, such as summoning and controlling some of the undead creatures. They can summon up to something as powerful as a Shadow Guardian, but they couldn't control it, and they can't overrule a sorcerer's control of any undead creatures. Oh, and they can't cross the realms." Seifer blinked, causing Squall to smirk. "What? You thought the portal Ultemecia created counted?"

"She called it crossing the realms..." Squall shrugged.

"What's in a name? Sorceresses create a time/space gate - a very, very localised and unstable form of time compression. Basically it takes two points, the origin and the destination, and compresses the distance between them, then it compresses the time between them - the ultimate effect being that of near-instantaneous travel from one point to another." He grinned. "You have, however, crossed the realms with me. It's how I got us into the cell where Quistis and Zell were being held." Seifer nodding, remembering how, at the time, he had wondered how Squall had magicked them through iron bars. "A sorcerer - and his knight - can physically transfer into the grey lands, the place between life and death, travel through the grey lands and then transfer back into the living world." He shrugged again. "There's no compression of time or distance, so a three day, thirty mile journey still covers thirty miles and still lasts three days, but nothing can block your passage, and nothing can sense your presence..."

"That's it!" Seifer exclaimed. "That's how we get to Rinoa in Centra!" He subsided as Squall shook his head.

"We'd have a couple of seconds at most when we appeared to get Rinoa - if she's even coherent - to stop the Centra weapon attacking us - if she can. If she couldn't, we'd have to jump back into the grey lands immediately and then get out of range before I ran out of energy and we were trapped permanently in the grey lands." He grimaced. "That's assuming we were able to find somewhere of the right elevation to set out from - there's no up and down in the grey lands, just lateral movement. Setting out from ground level would put us on the ground floor of the tower." Seifer subsided with a scowl.

"Thought this all through didn't you." He muttered. "So...any other 'useful' abilities?"

"Ellone could see both ways in time." The seeming non-sequitor made Seifer frown, but Squall continued before he could query either that Ellone could see ~both~ ways, or what Ellone's powers had to do with Squall. "It's not an ability I have conscious control over, but...sometimes I'll see things - usually in my sleep - and I'll know that that's what's going to happen. Like when I asked you to put as many of Trabia's survivors in Balamb Garden. I knew they'd be needed, that Kylari would send monsters against them as they tried to evacuate Balamb, and that they'd be needed against another of Kylari's attacks at Fisherman's Horizon." Seifer frowned.

"Well, that would be useful - if you could control it." Squall shook his head.

"I know enough to know that I don't want to know any more. If I had the choice I wouldn't even know what little I do." He shook his head again, a single, sharp toss of his head, as if trying to physically fling the knowledge out of his mind. "Sometimes it's as if there's another presence in my head, an outside agency controlling my thoughts and actions by showing me what will happen if I don't go through with this." Again the sharp headshake, this time accompanied by a brusque cutting gesture of his hand. "I'm not insane, I'm sure of it." Seifer refrained from pointing out that ~he~ hadn't felt insane either whilst he was being manipulated by Ultemecia. "But there has to be something - how else would I know that Hyne was the one who fucked all this up? How else would I know that this world should never have had magic, should never have had monsters?" Seifer had none of the answers - if there were any. After a moment, Squall seemed to calm down.

"I'm sorry." He apologised, looking away, staring at the lake as if it might hold the answers. "I suppose I should stick to what I ~do~ know." Seifer waited, silent, not knowing what to say. "Well, I suppose I could tell you the kind of benefits you get for being my knight." The grin was clearly forced, but Seifer welcomed it with a quirked eyebrow.

"Would be kinda nice." The blond drawled, relieved that Squall was actively moving the conversation away from the awkward silence that had threatened.

"Well, we're both immune to death magic, stuff like Zombie, Drain, Doom, Death etcetera. You can 'turn' low level undead like Gerogeros, Blood Souls and Creeps - I can command all undead, including anything that's been zombified. Our fighting abilities are increased, although I can't wield as much raw magic as I could without you - which prevents me from accidentally sending myself insane." There was a slight hesitation. "I also have a memory of a rumour that we can be contacted by the dead, although we can't see or hear them unless they want us to..." The brunette watched his knight's reaction carefully, only seeing surprise and curiosity, both entirely normal reactions.

"I don't know if that's a particularly good thing, considering." Seifer commented, shuddering. He'd decided the moment Squall had said the dead only appeared if they wanted to, that Irvine and Selphie probably hadn't appeared to Squall for a reason. That being the case, he wasn't about to reveal that he could confirm the rumour. Squall shrugged.

"It is only the memory of a rumour. There is an attack, however, that may be useful in the near future." Seifer looked interested. "It's called 'Soul Drain', and I think it might be the key to defeating the second X-ATV61UE. It involves you summoning Gilgamesh with both Hyperion and Lionheart." He deliberately didn't mention the after-effects of the attack.

"Well then," Seifer declared, rubbing his hands. "All we need is a Blue Widow to test it out on." Squall opened his mouth to comment, but no sound emerged as he suddenly fell to his knees, clutching at his head. "Squall!" Seifer dashed to his sorcerer's side just in time to catch the faintly whispered words.

"Stupid...bitch..."

***

If Xu's grief was clear to all, it didn't seem to be affecting her judgement - at least, not as far as planning the 'welcoming committee' for the creature went. The SeeDs evacuated from the MD level had obediently rounded everyone up, enabling Xu to simply explain what was going on, and then give everyone their assignments. Needless to say, even the civilians didn't expect to survive the coming battle.

***

"It's been quiet for so long." One of the SeeDs muttered nervously, looking around as if she expected to see the monster watching them with quiet amusement. Her friend nodded, but didn't take her eyes off the point where they expected the creature to break through.

"Maybe someone should go have a look..." Someone else suggested, although they didn't volunteer to go themselves. Everyone had felt the power of the creature when it had first broken its way into the MD level.

"No." Xu spoke up, her face an mask of hatred. Something - although no one knew what - had happened between her and the cadet who had stayed below. "The damn thing's smart enough that it's waiting for us to do just that. I wouldn't be surprised if it was drawing this out deliberately." A few of the SeeDs shuddered at the idea of a monster with intelligence comparable to that of a human opponent. Sure, they were used to the higher level monsters having a rudimentary intelligence - to the extent that they would flee battles or lay ambushes with others of their kind - but a monster that comprehended, and ~used~ psychological warfare? That was more than enough to send a shiver down their spines.

"Bet it's sleeping right now, while we worry ourselves to death up here." Someone grumbled, just in time to be proven wrong as ~something~ smashed into the trapdoor between the MD level and the basement where Norg had once resided in Balamb Garden. The metal rang like a gong, the vibrations making several SeeDs stagger. The second impact came before the echoes of the first had died away, making the floor jump violently. The door groaned, the metal showing the first dent.

"We ~have~ to stop it here." Xu reminded them. "If it gets into here it has the potential to strike at any deck." She waved at the wide space - easily big enough for any creature to move around in. There were firm nods from most, although a few bore increasingly uncertain expressions as the door slowly, but surely, began to give way before the creature's onslaught.

Finally the door could withstand no more. A square blow to the buckled centre popped the entire door free of its frame, sending it flying into the air to crash and clatter to the ground somewhere in the darkness. As if to throw the former arguments about its intelligence into question, a small snake-like head poked through the hole immediately, extended well into the room on a long, sinuous neck. Automatically one of the SeeDs attacked, easily severing the head. Xu shook her head slightly, frowning.

"Too easy..." The neck writhed, almost seeming to nod, then the stump began to bubble outwards. If Colin had been able to, he might have warned them what would happen, but he hadn't been able to, and so the SeeDs watched in horrified silence as the bubbling grew to form two new heads.

"What the fuck...?" Someone managed. Xu began to curse steadily, her venomous gaze never leaving the creature's heads. Two front legs appeared, draconic-looking, armed with vicious claws equally suited to dismemberment as demolition.

"Fira!" One of the SeeDs shouted, casting the spell towards the gap the creature was attempting to break through. As if teleported, the creature vanished backwards, the fire spell missing it completely to impact somewhere in the MD level. There was a violent hiss of liquid turning to vapour, and then the sickly sweet stench of burnt flesh. Burnt ~human~ flesh. Vaporised human blood...

There was an additional gleam in the creature's eyes when it reappeared. Almost triumphant, it seemed to regard its victory as a certainty - just a matter of time. But still, it had fled from the fira spell. Just so that they realised what it had done to the cadet who had opposed it - indicating a sadistic streak that confirmed its intelligence - or because it could be harmed by fire?

"Aura!" A golden glow surrounded another SeeD, the magic cast on them by a comrade. The glowing SeeD lifted his sword, calling out his limit break as the creature wedged itself further through the gap - all three of its necks, and all six of its heads visible.

"Lava Blade!" The SeeD charged the creature, dodging the paw that swiped at him and weaving between the heads seemingly effortlessly. In fact, for a moment, hope surged, as it seemed the SeeD would successfully connect with the very base of one of the three necks. And then hope came crashing down into despair.

The creature faded, becoming smoky and insubstantial, making no effort at all to avoid the blow that should have been fatal. The blow that passed through nothing at all. Off-balance, the SeeD never stood a chance of avoiding or defending against the two heads that promptly seized him. For an agonising few seconds the heads toyed with him, playing tug-of-war before forcefully ripping him in two. Mercifully the SeeD passed out within seconds.

The creature snorted and its multiple heads and eyes stared around, as if challenging anyone else to try and kill it. There were no takers, the SeeDs still in shock. Xu's only thought was that perhaps Colin had been more right than he knew when he had commented on how long the SeeDs with purely offensive GFs had lasted.

***

"Squall?" Seifer repeated, worried by the brunette's sudden collapse and confused by his words.

_Stupid bitch._ The voice came from Squall, there was no doubt of that, and yet, the brunette had neither moved his lips nor spoken telepathically. _Does she think to challenge the fate I have given her?_ For Seifer that, and the way Squall rose, his movements jerky and stiff, confirmed his worst fears. Squall was possessed.

"Who the fuck are you!" He demanded, jumping back. "Let him go!" 'Squall' turned towards him, and Seifer could see that the brunette's eyes were glassy and unfocussed, his head lolling slightly to one side, as if he hung from slightly loose marionette strings. There was a chuckle that seemed to come from everywhere, and yet Squall's expression never changed. This was no normal possession.

_I am the voice in his head. I am the one who gave the sorcerers their powers. I am the weaver of the destinies of all who live on this world. And I am here with his permission._ Seifer folded his arms, patently unimpressed.

"Yeah, and I'm the President of Galbadia. Try again." Squall's shoulders lifted briefly in a shrug before slumping once more.

_As you wish. It is a simple request. There are few enough Galbadians to persuade that you are their President, and they would not object if you chose to claim the title, I think._ Seifer blinked, wondering if he'd heard what he thought he'd heard. _On the other hand, there is a creature loose that could destroy a weaving millennia in the making - summoned by that foolish sorceress._ Squall's head lifted in question. _Will you help me, knight?_ Seifer stared at Squall for a moment, then his eyes narrowed.

"Will you return him when you're done?" Squall nodded. "Very well then - what do I do?" Squall's lips stretched into a smile that could never be called natural.

_Come with me..._

***

The creature turned out to be about the size of a fully-grown Ruby Dragon when it dragged all of its bulk out of the MD level and into the basement. It also seemed uninterested in attacking anyone not actively attacking it. This was small consolation for those SeeDs who ~had~ attacked it.

In fact, it seemed quite prepared to find a comfortable spot, curl up, and go to sleep - regardless of the fact that there were still over a dozen SeeDs in the room with it. Xu couldn't figure out if it was so complacent simply to draw them into their own complacency, or whether they truly posed so little a threat to it. Depressingly she was inclined towards the latter. Still, as she watched it padding around the far end of the basement, she couldn't decide whether it was better to die in a last - probably futile - charge against it, or whether they should try and draw out the time before it ran out of SeeDs - who were, effectively, brought up with the expectation that they would die sooner more likely than later - and started on the civilians.

"Hey!"

"What's happening!" The cries, almost on top of one another, came just as Xu had reluctantly decided that it was best to draw things out in the hopes that another option presented itself. She glanced upwards towards the creature in plenty of time to see what the other SeeDs were shouting about.

A network of glowing lines had formed on the ground around the creature - clearly visible in the darkness - and were now extending upwards like some sort of magical cage. SeeDs were glancing from one another, trying to ascertain who was responsible, but whoever it was, they weren't admitting anything. The creature had also noticed the glowing lines by this point, but it seemed wary of them for some reason. Maybe, Xu thought, it was as confused as everyone else. After all, whatever they were, they didn't appear to be offensive in nature. But they weren't exactly benign - the creature recoiled with a roar after touching one of the 'bars' of the 'cage' now surrounding it.

Instead of hurling itself at the threat, as they might have expected, it cowered away, retreating into the centre - heads watching and snarling at all four sides.

"Who the hell is responsible for this - and why the hell didn't they do it sooner!" Xu demanded, looking around at the other SeeDs. There were shrugs and puzzled expressions from everyone. "Well? It can't be happening by itself!"

_I believe the answers you are looking for are somewhat complex._ The voice came from the shadows, yet somehow it also came from within the mind at the same time - as if their minds were placing a direction on a directionless sound simply to preserve their sanity. _The effect is caused by a GF, but not one that you would be able to command. Think of it as being somewhat like Odin or Gilgamesh._ Two figures finally stepped from the shadows into view. One was Squall, although something was clearly not right in the way his head lolled slightly to one side, and in his vacant expression and stiff, shuffling walk. The other...

"Mr President!" Xu saluted, snapping to attention as did the three other Galbadian SeeDs in the basement. Seifer stopped dead, then whirled on Squall.

"Alright, fine. I believe you're the high and mighty whatever. Now undo it." Xu frowned in confusion.

_As you wish._ The voice radiated smugness. Seconds later Xu and the other Galbadians were looking somewhat confused again - this time as to why they were saluting when no one else was.

"Commander?" Xu asked, addressing herself to Squall and ignoring Seifer completely. "What's going on? Are you alright? What's happening in Galbadia?"

"Squall's not in at the moment, but if you'd like to leave a message..." Seifer muttered sarcastically. "What's going on," he said, raising his voice, "is that your small problem over there is capable of causing big heap trouble. Someone upstairs doesn't want that, so Squall has loaned his body and his knight to them so that they can sort out the problem before it is one." A few confused SeeDs glanced upwards, as if uncertain whether by 'upstairs' Seifer meant one of the civilians. He rolled his eyes. "Let's just say we're here to deal with the Shadow Guardian, and then you're on your own again."

_Enough. Everyone close their eyes - it knows I'm here, and it does not wish to return to the grey lands._ The command was impossible to disobey, and Seifer only managed to keep his own eyes open because Squall's possessor had told him to beforehand. Together they walked towards the cage of electricity Ansiko had created. The Shadow Guardian had turned its full attention towards them and was hissing and spitting angrily with all six heads, its tail lashing for all the world like an angry cat. It shook itself warningly as they drew nearer, then suddenly unfurled its wings, screeching expectantly.

Nothing happened. Seifer had flinched involuntarily, despite already having been reassured that he was immune to the insanity that looking through the smoky feathers would cause in normal living creatures. The Shadow Guardian had the same feathers in its wings as Squall - although Seifer had never seen Squall's wings - and they had the same ability of showing the world through a veil of death. The Shadow Guardian seemed unsurprised at their immunity - almost as if it didn't realise that its wings were lethal in the living world.

_It doesn't. Why should it? It does not belong here, it does not know the rules of this place. All it is trying to do is appear large and menacing enough to scare off what it sees as a threat._ Seifer gaped, barely able to believe that the creature of its size was perceiving ~them~ as a threat.

"Next you'll tell me that it won't injure anyone except in self-defence or by accident." Seifer muttered.

_It won't injure anyone except in self-defence or by accident._ The voice responded promptly. Seifer groaned and put his head in his hands. _Now, let me concentrate and send it home._ Seifer nodded absently, watching as Squall suddenly seemed to become more animated.

"**Seimutal. Faalshuflos. Darau day melioh tollaire aufer sai.**"

The words were a strange blend of Squall, the voice that had been speaking through Squall, and sheer power. The space within the cage seemed to blur and twist, and with a final despairing wail, the Shadow Guardian vanished.

"Well, that was far easier than I thought it would be." Seifer finally commented, staring appraisingly at the now-empty cage, and promptly collapsed.

***

It seemed like forever to the impatient sorceress, but when the X-ATV61UE finally appeared beside her, and the details of exactly ~why~ the other machine had been seeking her were displayed, Kylari didn't care about the time. She cackled gleefully as she read the intercepted message, not noticing that her Shadow Guardian had been banished, much less how or by whom.

Finally she had the key that would make her victory complete and certain!

Still cackling madly to herself, Kylari headed for the Centra Weapon and the impudent sorceress who had dared to challenge her. Rinoa and her powers would be ~hers~!

AN: Information...overload *falls over*  
Review gods damn it all! Or no more will you get!


	7. Eternal Night

AN: woo... everyone recovered from last chpt? (not you Seifer!)  
Well, count that as the long, fairly slow buildup to what should be a fairly fast-paced finale... *winks*  
Oh, oh, oh! And nice citrusy/lemony smells in this chapter - if anyone was reading and thinking 'she appears to have forgotten this is supposed to be yaoi' :p

**Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc ~ Endgame ~ Chapter Seven ~ Eternal Night**

Seifer woke to darkness. Not that the fact told him anything - other than it was dark. All he wanted to do was roll over in the bed - bed? When had he been moved to a bed? - and go back to sleep, but there was something...something at the back of his mind, just out of conscious reach, that he had to do... Something to do with, some...one? But who, and what? And why, feeling as exhausted as he did, had he even woken up already?

"You promised... You promised I wouldn't have to know everything...and now I do - you lied to me..." A voice, achingly familiar, and yet he couldn't place a name to it, his exhausted mind already trying to shut back down and sleep again. Only the forgotten task agitated it, keeping him vaguely conscious.

"I could have dealt with the Shadow Guardian - but now, knowing ~everything~... I can't finish this... I ~won't~ do what you want." Exhausted determination in the voice, despair and anguish slowly pulling a vague image into his mind's eye.

"What...?" Disbelief, so quiet and yet so intense - a sudden strong image of pure sapphire eyes, crystal shards of pain and betrayal gleaming in their depths, a sense of determination to see the light behind them extinguished forever that was his own, and yet not...

"I...Edea..." A long pause, not silent because of the sudden shaking breath drawn in. "I...oh gods...forgive me..." The voice of a man whose fragile grip on sanity is crumbling. He wanted to speak up, to comfort the owner of those icily expressive eyes, to apologise for whatever he sought forgiveness from, to make it all alright. To make it all okay again.

"Undo...but..." Confusion, hope, fear - a thousand emotions in the voice, and yet he was sure that, once upon a time, he would only have heard cold, uncaring tones. Another image in his mind's eye - a flash of lightning illuminating blood upon the ground, reflecting off the razor edge of an opponent's blade.

"Another chance...all of them. But...what of me?" Hope so faint as to nearly be drowned by expectation of disappointment. The sudden memory of a brunette child, his features hidden as he turns away, disappointed once more in his search for a sister who vanished without warning...without goodbyes.

"Tell me how." Steely determination. Images flashed through his mind, the brunette child, much older now, blood dripping down his face from a near-fatal strike, refusing to give in, to show weakness, the lightning flashing off the edge of his blade as it swings upwards to inflict the exact same wound on his attacker. Seifer's hand drifted to his face, feeling the scar there. Name, energy and memory returned with a rush of adrenaline.

***

"Squall?"

Seifer's voice - coming long before Squall had expected his blond knight to awaken - startled the brunette. It didn't matter that, in his lapse of concentration, the being with whom he had been speaking - as well as pleading and arguing - had vanished from his senses. The conversation had been over anyhow.

"How are you feeling?" He asked, somewhat wryly - both able to sense his knight's condition already, and remembering the many times in the infirmary where they had both been greeted with the same line from Dr Kadowaki on awakening. A simple thought illuminated the tent with a soft blue light.

"Like I went ten rounds with the Omega Weapon." Was Seifer's instant - and sarcastic - response. "What the hell was that, uh...conversation?" One of Squall's eyebrows quirked upwards, although the expression seemed somewhat, off.

"If you mean, have I cracked - not yet. As for how you're feeling, well, that's to be expected. You were effectively channeling the power of a god." Seifer considered the statement, comparing it with his memories before he had blacked out.

"Oh." The blond, for once, seemed at a loss to respond to either of his sorcerer's answers. "Uh, don't suppose we have any elixirs or anything spare?" Squall chuckled slightly before stepping over to the camp bed and perching on the side, next to his knight.

"Now," he began, "what makes you think you need anything like that?" Gently he ran his fingers - for once ungloved - down the side of Seifer's face, the contact sending a shiver through the blond. "After all - you ~are~ my knight..." Any response Seifer might have made was lost in a kiss that was, truly, beyond description, as his energy was replenished, the impending adrenaline crash dismissed as if it had never threatened. "Just remember, whatever happens, " Squall whispered, drawing back slightly, "I ~love~ you."

Seifer's last coherent thought was a promise to never forget.

***

Minde Island was the closest Kylari could get to the Centra Weapon, but it was more than close enough for her purposes. Clutching the Book of Shadows to her chest, she first created a defensive shield to protect her from any external agency - such as monsters - that might decide to attack. Then opening the book to the first page, for a summoning that didn't even require the drawing of a summoning circle it was so simple, she began to chant.

A few yards away the grass began to wilt and darken, slowly charring and giving off a faintly unpleasant odor that wasn't quite the smell of grass burning, but something darker. Kylari barely noticed it, her concentration on the correct rhythm and pronunciation so deep. The effect began to spread outwards, slowly creeping from one blade to another in all directions, like a spreading stain. The burnt grass in the centre began to flow and melt, bubbling as a gaseous haze began to filter through the gate.

When the gate was about a foot in diameter, ~something~ began to emerge. It was pale and insubstantial, not quite smoke, but not quite as solid as smokey crystal. Kylari continued to chant, seemingly oblivious to its presence.

After almost half an hour of chanting, the infestant had made it fully through the gate, which was slowly closing behind it. Beads of sweat rolled down Kylari's face, partly the result of the heat generated by the gate, but mainly from her concentration on the spell. Still, as she ended the chant - the gate vanishing leaving nothing but charred grass and a strange dark, glassy patch - she was not displeased with the results of her efforts.

After a few minutes to regain her breath - her energy levels would be increasing soon enough for her not to bother waiting longer than that - Kylari ordered her infestant to possess the Centra Weapon...

***

Seifer wasn't sure if it was 'right' to have the best sex of your life when comrades - and the rest of the world - were dying. He wasn't, lying in the narrow camp bed with Squall cradled in his arms as he was, going to complain about it though.

For once the bond between them was completely open, and whilst he didn't know the details of the causes, Seifer could feel everything Squall could...which had provided some rather interesting feedback effects...

The blond jumped as Squall's eyes suddenly blinked open, a surge of readiness passing through the brunette and into him. Quite what he was ready for, Seifer didn't know - but he was ready for it.

"She summoned an infestant. She must've figured out how to gain control of the Centra Weapon." Seifer blinked, automatically following Squall's example of rising and beginning to dress.

"You mean...you knew all along how to beat that thing?" The blond asked, his voice slightly muffled as he pulled his tee-shirt on.

"Subconsciously...yes." Squall replied, startling Seifer with his frankness. The brunette paused in fastening one of his ammunition belts to shrug, the lamplight flickering off the metal. "What would I have done with it if I ~had~ used an infestant to possess it?" Seifer grunted a non-committal response, shrugging quickly into his trenchcoat. He hadn't really thought beyond the point of being able to do something ~to~ the Centra Weapon.

"Ready?" Squall asked, straightening up.

"Bring it." Seifer replied, moving next to him.

The world went black.

***

"We're here." Squall's voice came out of the darkness from his left, but even knowing that they were stood in the exact same positions as they had been when they left the tent, Seifer still couldn't make the brunette out. He couldn't make anything else out either - although the various shouts and general noises of panic suggested that they had returned to the camp.

"It wasn't this dark a minute ago. What's going on?" There was a slight sigh from Squall's direction, and a trace of amused frustration seeped through the bond. Seifer thought a moment longer and then realised. "Wow, that was quick."

"She's impatient." Squall responded. "This has taken her far longer than she thought it would." He both sounded and felt extremely smug, but there was also a deeper feeling of pride. Squall was proud of how, even under the circumstances that they had - albeit unknowingly - been under, ~his~ SeeDs had refused to give in and sell their lives cheaply.

"So...now what do we do?" Seifer jumped as Squall's blue Lionheart blade gleamed suddenly, too bright in the darkness for eyes unprepared for the sudden contrast in light and dark.

"You'll need this - there'll be enough light to see by soon enough." Seifer had the uncomfortable feeling that the light wasn't going to be such a good thing as it sounded. Although, if what he was sensing ~was~ Kylari's army of darkness, it would make the task of seeing them coming much easier. Squall, it seemed, could see just as well - impossible as it should have been - in complete darkness as he could in daylight.

"Uh...shouldn't our lot be um, glowing slightly?" Seifer queried, suddenly remembering how Squall had cast some sort of spell to enable the SeeDs and Estharians to inflict damage on the shadow creatures.

"The glow fades, otherwise you stand out like a neon sign in the darkness. The spell is perpetual - as long as the weapon you're using has killed something."

"Pity the unlucky sod whose mates always killed whatever he'd weakened eh?" Squall didn't respond, but his emotions were cold and hard. He didn't like it, but that was how the spell worked - and it did work for the vast majority of SeeDs and most of the Estharians.

Unfortunately the spell was only to enable an otherwise normal weapon to inflict damage on a foe that was anything but normal. It gave no defense against the long series of fragmentation and incendary grenades that - as Squall had predicted - brought light to, perhaps, the worst case scenario that anyone could have imagined.

***

This was the enemy the X-ATV61UEs had been designed to fight. The enemy that only one of them had survived to fight. Still, whilst the fragmentation grenades shredded the tents ignited by the incendary grenades, there was almost no damage done to the SeeDs and Estharians, who had all spread outwards to defend the perimeter. Almost no damage. What ~was~ hit was the mess tent, where still-hot bowls of food formed the largest heatsource in the X-ATV61UE's sensors.

Heatsource dispersed - enemy destroyed as far as the X-ATV61UE was concerned - the machine re-evaluated it's position relative to the remaining heatsources. Dismissing two larger heatsources in the centre of the camp as a result of its incendary attack, the Blue Widow teleported into the heart of SeeD encampment...

***

While the soldiers initially praised the blossoming of light - enabling them to see the shadow creatures who had crept altogether too close for comfort - it quickly dawned on them that the light ~hadn't~ been created for their benefit. Chaos quickly spread as those who looked towards the heart of the camp spotted the X-ATV61UE and promptly nudged their neighbours to also look and confirm the terrible reality. They were effectively sandwiched between two very deadly foes.

Chaos under such conditions might not have been enough to cause the defensive perimeter to crumble, but as the X-ATV61UE activated its lasers and began picking off two or three soldiers at a time, here and there around the circle, those who remained fell into disarray.

The shadow creatures, waiting for exactly this opportunity, lost no time in sweeping, en masse, towards the broken SeeD and Estharian defenses. It quickly degenerated into a series of isolated pockets of resistance, which the X-ATV61UE systematically destroyed using missiles and more grenades.

The fight was almost over...but not quite.

As the fires started by the incendary grenades began to die down, highlighting a remaining few pockets of resistance as potential targets, a subsystem in the Blue Widow's programming finally identified Squall and Seifer - only a few metres away - as a high-level potential threat. The 'potential' was instantly knocked from the classification as Squall cast a spell with the same effect - although with an infinitely longer duration - as a very light (1).

No longer hidden in growing darkness, the X-ATV61UE turned its attention to Squall and Seifer, as did a large number of shadow creatures.

***

Seifer didn't know what to expect from the Blue Widow. He knew it was fast when fighting without its hi-tech, wide-range weaponry. He knew it had a repair system that would effectively nullify any attack he might make, reducing him to defense. But he also knew that, where it had seemed to know about Quistis' Degenerator limit break, it didn't know about his - as yet untried - Soul Drain limit break.

"You sure you don't want this back?" He queried Squall, spotting the worryingly large number of shadow creatures heading in their direction. The brunette waved a hand to indicate no, never breaking off from his quiet chant. Seifer shrugged, and turned his full attention back to the Blue Widow just in time to deflect one of two laser beams aimed at Squall.

The first laser beam - that Seifer had deflected - had been on target. The second, fortunately, was slightly off in its aim. Instead of hitting Squall's shield at head-height, it struck slightly to the right at around waist-height. There, to Seifer's shock, it was held for a moment, before the shield burnt out and the beam burst through, briefly enough for no serious physical damage to be done, but long enough to disrupt whatever spell Squall had been invoking.

The effects of the disrupted spell snapped backwards into Squall, who grunted and staggered backwards as though punched in the gut. Seconds later the physical backlash washed over him, throwing him violently to the ground.

The mental curse was accompanied by the sound of Squall spitting blood from his mouth before wiping the red traces away from his mouth and nose. 

Cursing himself for his inattention, Seifer faced off against the X-ATV61UE again. Still, the lingering wonder at the weakness of Squall's shield remained.

***

Squall cursed himself for snapping at Seifer. He hadn't warned the blond that restoring his health would drain his own energy levels to the point where - if he wanted to cast anything serious - he would have next to no shielding. Seifer had, in fact, saved him by managing to deflect the on-target laser, whether by luck or design. Unfortunately he was now battered, bruised, burned - and completely out of shielding.

As the shadow creatures grew bolder, some attracted by the lingering wild traces of magic left by the spell's collapse, Squall drew himself up and thanked the fact that his ability to Command the undead was innate and required so little of his power.

"Eque in fidem recipere! (2) Nos in fidem venire! (3)" There was confusion in the ranks of the undead, then, slowly, those at the front - who had heard Squall's Command - turned on their fellows, protecting Squall - and Seifer.

Squall allowed himself to sag slightly. He didn't know how much time he'd bought, but it was some...maybe enough that he would recover the energy he needed to Command before he had to Command again...

***

The Blue Widow, Seifer was nigh-on ecstatic to discover, had used up its limited stock of ammunition - both projectile ~and~ laser. It was, however, still just as fast as before, and with two blades forcing him to improvise a fighting style as he went along, Seifer was only barely holding his own. At least, as he could see out of the corner of his eye, he didn't have to worry about Squall and the shadow creatures. Whatever the brunette had shouted had sent them into disarray, fighting each other in what appeared to be an attempt to defend them.

A hiss of pain escaped his lips as both attention and guard wavered, allowing the X-ATV61UE to land a square blow on his side, staggering him. Exhaustion was wearing him down faster than he wanted to admit, although he did have an excuse - of sorts - in prior events.

Squall's voice in his mind startled him, enabling the Blue Widow to land another solid blow. Seifer jumped back, crossing the two gunblades in front of himself. Praying that it would work, he drew himself up.

"Gilgamesh! Soul Drain!" Once again there was a strange sense of doubling, then Gilgamesh was there, all four swords in hand. Seifer ran into the GF merging with him even as the six swords merged together into something that Seifer knew didn't quite exist on the same plane as everything else. The X-ATV61UE was moving - in slow motion - trying to back away. Seifer laughed, hearing a high, berserker's giggle emerge instead, and leaped onto the top of the machine, plunging the Negablade deep into the machinery.

The X-ATV61UE froze, as did the world - except for the Negablade, pulsing brighter and brighter, and yet also pulsing darker and darker at the same time. A ripple of ~something~ began to travel up the Blue Widow's legs, and where it passed the machine simply crumbled into a pale grey ash-like substance. The final pulse of the Negablade sent a ring of fire and light rolling outwards. It passed over Squall with a brief flicker of blue - the sorcerer's shields protecting him - and continued outwards, destroying shadow creatures as it touched them.

Seifer clung to the Negablade, barely feeling as the swords separated, tearing at his hands and removing flesh to reveal bone. He felt as if he were being torn in two as Gilgamesh separated from him, and barely noticed as he crashed to the ground into the piles of ash that were the remains of the Blue Widow. Unconsciousness claimed him before he registered that Squall too was in dire straits.

***

The Negablade would not discriminate, Squall knew. He also knew that his shields would have to be incredibly strong - but only for a fraction of a second. Unfortunately even that would drain him to the point where his body would just shut down in an attempt to prevent him using so much energy that he died.

But he had no choice. As the ring of fire and light came close enough to scorch him, Squall drew on reserves of power that he'd never had to access before. The shield barely lasted long enough to protect him, burning blue in the visible spectrum as it burned away. Imminent danger gone, Squall retained consciousness long enough to see Seifer collapse on the ground before he too fell into darkness.

AN: ooer...kinda looking like for all she's weaker, Kylari may be the one coming out on top here...

(1) very light - basically a signal flare, but used here as a means of lighting an area  
(2) Eque in fidem recipere - Latin, something along the lines of 'The knight is under my protection'  
(3) Nos in fidem venire - Latin, something along the lines of 'I place myself in your protection'

_JKH:_ lol, thank you very much. *rubs hands gleefully* it's all coming towards a head now...


	8. Darkest Before Dawn

AN: long chapter, but things are really hotting up now...

**Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc ~ Endgame ~ Chapter Eight ~ Darkest Before Dawn**

It was a simple solution, so simple that Kylari was almost ashamed that she had not figured it out before it had been handed to her on a silver platter. It was so simple, in fact, that it was also a flawless solution - in one action she had stolen control of the Centra Weapon from the wayward Rinoa, and simultaneously ensured that the raven-haired sorceress couldn't steal it back.

That the sorcerer might be able to steal control didn't matter to her - Kylari's lip curled as she briefly assessed the situation in Galbadia. The fool was there, with his knight, still trying to deny the inevitability of her supremacy by aiding his pathetic little army. He was obviously planning something - there was no other reason that he would be so far from his own forces - maybe a pincer movement in an attempt to break through the encircling ranks of shadow creatures? It didn't matter. He was already defeated - he was just refusing to acknowledge the fact.

***

Edea had managed, barely, to maintain her dominant position in Rinoa's fracture mentality long enough to ensure that when - not if - the childish personality Kylari had implanted took back control, it would not be able to countermand the Centra Weapon's orders.

Her foresight had paid off when, after failing to reach Rinoa physically, Kylari had possessed the girl - at which point Edea had beaten a hasty retreat - and attempted to take control of the Weapon that way. The scream of frustration when it had failed had been purely mental, but ~extremely~ satisfying.

Now, however, it was Rinoa who was alternately screaming and babbling nonsense platitudes as she felt control of the Centra Weapon vanish beneath another creature's power. A creature she knew instinctively was itself under Kylari's control.

***

Control of all the sorceress powers was a single death away from being hers, and as Kylari strode triumphantly into the room where Rinoa sat, partially submerged in her stone prison, the overwhelming desire for power overrode her desire to gloat. After all, Rinoa was far too broken to appreciate anything she might say, and she was looking forward to gloating over the sorcerer after she broke him, and just before she took his powers for her own.

Reaching out with both hands, almost caressing the trapped sorceress, Kylari snapped Rinoa's neck with swift and brutal precision.

For a moment time seemed to stop, and then the power - and its attendant personality fragments - began to pour from the broken vessel and into the closest available replacement...

***

As Squall and Seifer prepared to return to the army, and as the maelstrom of power slowly settled and stilled within Kylari, the magical wind died completely, taking with it the last of the light.

***

Standing on top of the Centra Tower, revelling in the feeling of the power that she now controlled, Kylari summoned her one remaining Blue Widow. Her attention was now focussed on the last point of resistance - the sorcerer, his knight, and his army. They were already surrounded, and it would take little to destroy them utterly.

Smirking cruelly, Kylari gave the Blue Widow its orders and watched it disappear from view, sensing its reappearance in Galbadia. With barely a thought, she formed herself a throne, and settled in to 'watch' the resulting chaos.

***

Edea hadn't been certain whether Kylari had detected her presence when the other sorceress had possessed Rinoa's mind whilst attempting to take back control of the Centra Weapon, but there had been nothing since Rinoa's death to indicate that Kylari even knew there were personalities belonging to other sorceresses - other than Rinoa anyway - within her mind.

This was, as far as Edea was concerned, a very good thing. Not least because she was still trying to force those other personalities into a cohesive group capable of - when the time came - aiding her, and hence, hopefully, aiding Squall in his plan.

But as she spied on Kylari's knowledge, she had to wonder whether Squall's plan was any better than the sorceress'.

***

Kylari cheered as the X-ATV61UE's laser broke through the sorcerer's shield with ease, but the sound died abruptly as she scowled in sudden realisation. The sorcerer was already weak, and much as she wanted him dead, she wanted his demise to be on ~her~ terms - and that meant only once she was certain that only she and him remained alive.

Watching closely - in case she had to interfere - Kylari's anxiety settled somewhat as she watched the sorcerer Command his attackers to defend him and his knight, whilst the knight fought - somewhat stiltedly - against the Blue Widow. It was clear that both were reaching their limits, clear both to her and to them, as the knight - reacting to something yelled by the sorcerer - summoned and merged with a GF.

Fascinated, Kylari watched the attack drain the energy from the Blue Widow, and then release it in a burst of heat so intense that everything it touched on its outward journey - without discrimination - was instantly incinerated. She watched delightedly as the sorcerer - who had obviously used the last of his energy reserves creating the shield that saved him from his knight's attack - fall to the ground on the verge of unconsciousness. Her delight only increased as she watched the damage inflicted on the knight by the separation of the GF push him over the edge of consciousness, quickly followed by the sorcerer.

Unfortunately, her delight at their predicament meant that she felt the wave of energy - still strong despite the distance it had come, although no longer as lethal - bare seconds before it washed over her. There was no time for her to construct her own shield, and whilst it caused no physical damage, it pushed at the fragile control she had over the vast amount of power that was now hers to call on - and it pushed ~hard~.

For what seemed like forever she teetered, on the brink of surrendering to the insidious siren-song of the power washing over - and through - her. It surrounded her, brushing like silk across her skin, smothering her even as it seduced her.

It took nearly ten minutes for Kylari to stabilise her control once more, and the effort required to attain that stabilisation left her panting for breath and suddenly uncertain if she could control the sorcerer's powers as well as her own. But, she reasoned, not only were the sorcerer's powers the opposite of her own - which in theory should cause them to balance out and actually make them ~easier~ to control - but she also intended to burn off the majority of both sets of powers when she recreated the world.

She never noticed the silence of her other personalities...

***

Once the sorcerer and his knight were hanging in chains in the tower, Kylari cackled softly and then indulged herself by letting her senses spread across the world. Her good humour vanished without trace, replaced by surprise and anger as she detected life where there should have been none.

Scowling in concentration, she brought her attention to bear on the offensive presence, discovering to her further shock that, somehow, the SeeDs had destroyed her Shadow Guardian.

Snarling, she glanced at her two prisoners. Deciding they weren't going to regain consciousness any time soon - and even if they were, she was far too powerful for them now - Kylari opened a portal, and stepped into the heart of the Deep Sea Research Centre.

***

Scarcely a minute after Kylari vanished from the tower, Squall groaned and raised his head, echoed seconds later by Seifer.

"Well," Seifer finally commented, "this isn't good."

***

The attack of the Shadow Guardian and its subsequent destruction had truly brought home to everyone in Galbadia Garden just how precarious their situation was. After all, Squall - or so they believed - had been less powerful than the sorceress before Trabia had been destroyed. Now that she had - or would soon - control of all the sorceress powers, what hope did they have?

That wasn't to say they had given up completely, but neither had they blinded themselves to the truth of the matter. They would be facing a vastly more powerful opponent, who was unlikely to fight with any honour or sense of 'fairness'. In true SeeD spirit, therefore, they had set their backs to the wall, bared their teeth in a snarl, and thrown themselves into preparing to go out fighting. SeeD were not considered the bane of sorceresses for no reason after all.

Thus it was, that when Kylari - who had decided that the loss of her Shadow Guardian merited a more personal revenge than a simple Hellball - appeared in the Deep Sea Research Centre's lower chamber, where Squall and his companions had once fought the Ultima Weapon and gained the allegiance of the GF Eden, she instantly triggered half-a-dozen magical and physical traps.

Only her quick reflexes, and the shield she had been maintaining since being injured in Trabia, saved her from serious injury. But the speed with which she had grabbed at her power had once more threatened her control over it. Swaying slightly as she forced it into equilibrium once more, Kylari reflected that losing control was a greater enemy than the SeeDs inadvertently threatening that control.

Smirking evilly, she spread her arms and wings, and began to draw the life energy from around her. Her aura began to show, glowing brighter as the crystals within the cavern began to dim and blacken. As the crystals nearest to her began to splinter and crumble, Kylari began to walk up the winding path, life leeching from everything she passed. Proceeded by a deathly chill and spreading decay, aura increasing with every step, Kylari headed for the Garden - and her revenge.

***

A weak chuckle, rapidly strengthening, was Squall's only response. Seifer frowned, craning his neck to try and see the brunette's expression. Not that he would blame him if he'd finally gone off the deep end.

"Squall? You alright?" Seifer's frown deepened as he realised how quickly they were both recovering. His recovery could be linked to Squall's, but...rolling his eyes at his own forgetfulness, Seifer remembered what Squall had said about the sorcerer powers being linked to death... But that meant...

"It's always darkest before the dawn." Squall commented cryptically, chuckling again. Seifer wondered with a sinking feeling who was left to kill, closing his eyes in denial as he realised.

"Please tell me saving Galbadia Garden wasn't a deliberate move to this end. Tell me you haven't used them as some sort of obscene...~battery~!" He spat the last word, praying that his suspicions were wrong, but knowing, deep inside, that, just as every other 'defeat' and 'sacrifice' had been, this too had been calculated.

"I won't lie to you Seifer. Not here, not now." Squall responded softly, sadly. He didn't deny the accusation, even though he knew well enough that it had been a calculating move made ~for~ him rather than ~by~ him - not like the others.

"But you would before." Anger rose from deep inside at Seifer's broken words. Just because no one else could see it, didn't mean that he'd had any more choice in the matter than them.

"When will you understand!" He exploded. "I've been lying my whole life. By the time I knew anyone well enough to trust them with the truth, I couldn't do it. It was easier to keep lying. Easier to never wonder if someone I'd told had told someone else. Easier to sleep never fearing that I might wake up to the sound of a mob. Easier to live a lie than the truth." By the end his voice was as broken as his knight's. "But at the same time it was never easier, because I knew the truth behind the lies that everyone else was living. Lies within lies within lies." He continued softly. "The truth was forgotten by everyone but the sorcerers a long, long time ago." He finished, voice so quiet that Seifer almost missed the words, almost missed the incredible weariness behind them that spoke of a burden no one person should ever have carried, shouldered long ago as a penance for nothing more than being a descendant of the 'wrong' ancestors.

***

By the time Kylari reached the MD level of the Garden itself, entering through the hole the Shadow Guardian had torn, she had a massive excess of energy in her aura. She could feel - and see - the fluctuations, like solar flares, arcing out around her in an attempt to ground themselves. Realising that to gather much more life energy without bleeding off some beforehand would be potentially fatal to herself, Kylari extended her hands in front of herself, channelling the energy outwards in twin shafts of pure destruction. Half of the Garden's base vaporised instantly and silently. The energy kept pouring out and into the water beyond, making it boil ferociously and release clouds of heated steam into the sealed chamber.

***

"I'm sorry." The words were soft, and wholly inadequate, but they were from Seifer, and that made them more meaningful, more precious to Squall than any eloquent attempt to say the same thing.

"As am I." Squall responded, equally softly. He knew Seifer would hear the unspoken words. He was sorry for everything - no matter whether it was directly his fault or not. Events in the world had been heading for this end from the moment the sorcerers had been given the counter powers to the sorceresses.

"Will you tell me...I had a waking dream, after the Shadow Guardian...will you tell me who you were speaking to - what was being said...?" Squall had said he wouldn't lie, but Seifer was well aware that the brunette specialised in half-truths and evasions. He would rather the brunette outright refuse to tell him than lie to him again. His trust would not survive another such blow, no matter how noble the cause.

"A little..." Squall whispered. "Until ~she~ returns..."

***

The Garden was sinking, listing fiercely away from the Deep Sea Research Centre and lurching every so often as more and more weight was placed upon the docking ties. It was only a matter of time before the ties broke completely, but considering they couldn't disembark anyway - the hatch frame had warped when the ties had first slipped and was designed to be unassailable - it was more a matter of what would reach them first; the sorceress or the water...

***

A more controlled burst of pure energy vaporised the hatch between the MD level and the basement level of the Garden. Waves of heated mist poured out, incongruously white around the dark figure that walked at its heart. The mist alone remained pure and untouched as Kylari once again began to leech the life energy from her surroundings. In a morbid twist of humour, a long and wicked-looking scythe materialised in her hands.

At the heart of a scalding mist, proceeded by the spreading taint of death as she stole the life energy from all around, Kylari stalked the corridors of Galbadia Garden like an angel of death made real.

***

"I am nothing more than anyone else - a puppet on strings of destiny, manipulated by a higher power. Perhaps I am more powerful, more important, but that only reduces my choices. I swore my soul to a god, and in return I was granted the bliss of innocence - I would still have to make bitterly hard decisions, but, for the most part, I was shielded from the painful knowledge of the future."

"That's what you meant when you said you couldn't control the power Ellone had." Squall nodded.

"When I was possessed, the power you channelled took its toll on you as exhaustion and, briefly, amnesia. That same power took its toll on me by stripping the blocks preventing me from seeing the goal for which I have been working so long... You were, fortunately, not awake for the worst of it." There were no recriminations in Squall's voice. Clearly the conversation after the possession had placated the brunette...or he had simply resigned himself to doing what he had to do - as he had in the war against Ultemecia.

"I felt betrayed." Squall continued. "But at the same time I could see the truth of my possessor's words - I had always, subconsciously, known what I had to do and what the outcome would be." He paused and sighed. "I had, ~have~ a choice - although it isn't really a choice at all; let Kylari take my powers and destroy the world, or take Kylari's powers myself - and destroy the world." Seifer blinked, understanding why Squall had commented that it wasn't really a choice.

"But because you're a SeeD, you'll go down fighting." Seifer mused, slowly speaking his thoughts aloud. "And you'll take Kylari's powers and destroy the world yourself, because you've saved it once, and that makes it yours to destroy." Squall didn't correct his reasoning, instead smiling sadly.

"Yes." He agreed softly. Seifer nodded, smirking his approval.

"Well, if that's how it's goin' down, that's how it's goin' down." He stated decisively. "But where does Edea come into all this?" He suddenly queried, recalling Squall's shaky prayer for forgiveness. Edea was dead - wasn't she?

***

The wailing screech as the metal docking ties gave way - causing the Garden to lurch and wallow before it began to steadily sink - was as portentous as a banshee's wail. Seconds after the noise had died away, and the Garden's rocking motion had evened out somewhat, Kylari fell upon the first ranks of SeeDs. Blinded by the scalding steam their attacks went wild, and they failed to notice their lives being drained until, one by one, they began collapsing, too weak to remain standing.

When the mist, following the sorceress like the deadly train of a dress, cleared, all that remained of the SeeDs were blackened and withered corpses, twisted in contorted poses of agony.

None of those she killed ever saw more than a shadow in the mist. None of them stood a chance against her wrath. But none of them died without a fight, however futile, and none of them died pleading for her non-existent mercy.

Hovering in the sky over the rapidly sinking Garden, Kylari reflected on the tenacity and pride of the SeeDs who had, wherever she had fought them, and however she had fought them, refused to give an inch. She could understand, now, the way in which generation after generation of the mercenaries had thrown themselves against Ultemecia, never once conceding that they were simply outmatched. She frowned. However 'honourable' they might be considered, they had fought and lost, and losers didn't get monuments. Using the very energy she had stolen from them, Kylari coldly destroyed every trace of Galbadia Garden and the Deep Sea Research Centre.

Satisfied at last that only three people remained alive on the planet, Kylari opened a portal, and as the waves crashed into the space that had been boiled away, releasing a last, forlorn belch of steam, she stepped back into the tower.

It was time to end it.

***

Squall opened his mouth to explain how he had, in effect, handed Edea to Kylari on a platter, but quickly closed it as a portal opened in the room and Kylari stepped out. It was clear to both men that her aura was brighter than usual, but only Squall knew why. She had been stealing life-force from something - or someone - inadvertently gifting him with the resultant death energy. He hadn't thought there were enough people in Galbadia Garden for their deaths to give him the boost he had received, and this explained it.

"I'm so glad you're both awake." The sorceress purred, a predatory and triumphant gleam in her eyes. "It wouldn't have been nearly as much fun if I'd had to waste my energy on keeping you awake for the...entertainment." A feral grin left no doubts that they ~were~ the entertainment.

"Is your song-and-dance routine so boring then?" Seifer sneered. Kylari, far from becoming angry, laughed lightly and tutted, waving her finger at him as though he were an errant child.

"Now, now. So determined to die like a good little SeeD?" She laughed again at his blank expression. "Oh, it's no use pretending - I know my enemy now." More laughter, this time a touch rueful. "I really should have seen it as Ultemecia, but all I could feel was anger at the fools who kept coming, knowing they were going to die, but challenging me anyway."

"Rats bite when cornered - mercenaries may have a sense of honour, but we're rats at heart." Seifer bared his teeth in a parody of a grin.

"Does that mean you'll bite me?" Kylari teased.

"Come closer and find out." Seifer growled, eyes narrowed in challenge.

"Why?" Squall's voice interrupted. "What made you choose this path? What caused the hatred to wrap around your heart and soul so tightly that they choked and died?" His voice was curious, but sad at the same time. Kylari narrowed her eyes at him.

"I don't want your ~pity~!" She spat, turning away from them.

"Good, because I have none for you - it was your choice to take this path. But if I am to die, I want to know why."

"Because I have decided that you should. Because I want your power. Because I want my revenge, and you are in my way!" Kylari hissed, her eyes glowing with some intense emotion. Squall's expression remained stoic.

"Why?" He asked again. "Who is dead that you fear so much that you must destroy them utterly?" There was power behind his words, shadowy and subtle, a seductive invitation to reveal all. But Seifer remembered what Squall had said about the mind-reading abilities of the sorcerers, and how it had been honed down the generations. Over a millennia of honing had to have made the ability damn sharp...sharp enough to go undetected by an emotional sorceress?

"I fear no one!" Kylari screamed, aura flaring as her control over the sorceress powers slipped fractionally. "Living ~or~ dead!" Squall only smirked, a wicked gleam in his eyes as he began to speak again, voice barely louder than a whisper.

"Bastard child." His voice was an eerie hiss and his eyes glowed with an unearthly light. "Friendless bastard child. Abandoned, unwanted, by your father; murderer of your mother, stealing her life for your own." Kylari had begun to tremble, but Squall continued. "Taken by mercenaries and used against the only person to ever care, her death upon your hands."

"Dear Gods..." Seifer's whisper went unheard as Squall continued to list the sorceress' past - each point chillingly reflected in his own history. Kylari's trembling was more pronounced now, and her focus was on something only she, and perhaps Squall, could see.

"You wanted revenge, and for that you needed power, but it took too long, and you needed the power that was only a legend - the power of a sorcerer." Squall tilted his head to one side, regarding the sorceress, who appeared to be lost in her own thoughts and memories. "How is it you did not believe the legends, which you knew, as a sorceress, to be true? How is it that you did not believe the dead who had wronged you would suffer for that wrong until their souls were reborn into the world, and every time they died for all eternity?" There was no answer as Kylari silently slumped to the ground.

***

It was the moment Edea had been waiting for. She had used Kylari's preoccupation with gaining and controlling the sorceress powers to forcibly merge the weaker personality fragments into her own. The minutes of distraction when the sorceress had fought to remain in control, courtesy of Seifer's limit break destruction of the last X-ATV61UE, had been enough to take control of and subsume all but the largest fragment - that of Rinoa and the child that had once been Askylarian. That had taken place as Kylari stepped into the SeeD traps in the Deep Sea Research Centre.

Ruthlessly Edea pulled memories from Kylari's mind, weaving them into a net that would distract and confuse the sorceress long enough for her to take control and do what she must.

***

Seconds later Kylari stirred and rose, her movement jerky and uncoordinated, like a puppet, or someone possessed...

"Edea..." Squall murmured, voice devoid of emotion. Any reply - if she possessed enough control to reply - was drowned by a sudden howling and wailing. Squall's eyes narrowed in suspicion as an almost visible wind howled around the room, twisting and circling about the possessed sorceress. For a brief moment Seifer thought he could see the faces of their dead friends within the thin vapours; Selphie, Irvine, Quistis, Zell, Xu... They seemed to be saying something to Edea, something that she didn't like hearing, but he couldn't quite make out the words that teased on the edge of comprehension. Squall, on the other hand, appeared to be able to hear them without difficulty, and Seifer knew, with a horrible sense of finality, what was being said when Squall went white and glanced in his direction.

"NO!" Seifer could feel the desperation behind the words, could see it in the way Squall strained against the manacles that held him captive, in the way he shook his head in violent disagreement. But the dead had apparently managed to convince Edea, and Squall was in no position to stop her advancing towards his knight. "No..." He sobbed, truly broken, tears streaming down his face.

Seifer watched dispassionately as 'Kylari' approached, already resigned to his fate. It was clear that Squall did not have the power to escape from his restraints ~and~ defeat Kylari - and he, Seifer, was the reason Squall's power was limited. The bond between them could only be broken with the death of one or other of them... He felt an icy hand grip at his heart, and then the wind howled ~through~ him, and he felt his soul and consciousness tear free of his body, the bond's severed end snapping back into Squall like broken elastic.

"I forgive you." Seifer's ghost whispered into the unearthly silence. He vanished with the now-silent wind as Edea finally lost control to Kylari once more, and Squall's anguished scream of loss and betrayal rent the air.

AN: Yes, I watched Elektra recently *grins* the effect was too cool ~not~ to um...borrow...although the similarities are limited to the visuals and the end effect. Whoo, well, that took a long time to write...damned writer's block...   
Review? Pretty please?

JKH: glad you liked it! thanks for reviewing!

Yume Li: Thank you very much, I'm glad you think so. Personally I still can't stand the first one, find the second one tolerable, am much happier with the third and currently love the fourth. *grins* I hope you enjoy the rest of the last book, and thanks again for the review!

eeza: I agree, there can never be too much SxS *grins* I'm glad you like my stories, and here is the update - thanks for the review!


	9. The End of the Beginning of the End

AN: Four chapters to go!

**Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc ~ Endgame ~ Chapter Nine ~ The End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End**

It was the ultimate betrayal, both for Squall the man, and Squall the last sorcerer. Everything he had was gone. Everything he had cared for had been taken away. Everything...

He was alone. Completely and utterly alone.

Except for the sorceress... The sorceress responsible for bringing things to a head. The sorceress responsible for making him go through all of this.

But he knew that wasn't true. The Gods alone were responsible for this. Hyne and her meddling were the sole cause at the root of events culminating millennia later. Kylari was as much a pawn of fate as he was, except she was blissfully unaware of it. She had felt pain and anguish in her life, true, but she had caused so much more - had caused him to cause so much more...

***

Kylari was furious.

She had lost control, surprised and trapped in her own mind. Caught by a coalition of the sorceresses whose powers she had forcibly stolen. A coalition led by her eldest foe - Edea Kramer. The sorceress had somehow crept into Rinoa's mind - and now she thought about it, there was really no other way for Rinoa to have known how to create a Weapon - and from there into her mind.

Seething, she tore through the veil of memories keeping her imprisoned and latched onto the foreign presence in her mind. It seemed to take only seconds to break free and crush the personalities - including those of her own who had been forcibly merged - into nothingness. When she broke back to consciousness, however, it was to the anguished howl of the sorcerer, and several minutes appeared to have passed. Long enough for Edea to have killed the sorcerer's knight.

Sneering, Kylari lowered her hand from the chest of the blond corpse. She felt no remorse, even if Seifer Almasy ~had~ once been Ultemecia's knight, that personality fragment was gone now, and its attendant emotions with it. All that remained was pure Kylari. Pure Kylari that could feel the power building and twisting around the sorcerer...

Backing up slightly, she wondered whether she might have underestimated the sorcerer as the power continued to intensify. It was a measure of how strong the power was that she could sense it, for normally a sorcerer's power could not be detected by anyone other than another sorcerer. And this sorcerer was like her - so like her it was uncanny. He had come from a background almost identical to her own, but he had not grown up knowing the truth of his past, he had learned it when it hurt the most, when he had accepted the lies. Yet still he had chosen to fight for those who had betrayed, abused and used him... Or had he? For here he was, most likely stronger than she, without anything to lose - or gain, except the power she herself sought.

Baring her teeth in a feral snarl, refusing to admit her fears - that he was too strong, that she could not defeat this last obstacle - Kylari brought all the sorceress powers to bear on the mourning sorcerer, still hanging from the wall.

***

Squall was broken from his musings as Kylari gathered her powers and threw them against him. Instinct alone saved him in that first instant, channelling the excess powers released with his knight's death into a shield around him.

For the longest of moments they remained, locked in a stalemate, sorceress powers flickering in and out of visibility as they washed over and against the shield. The shield also flickered in and out of sight, never wavering in its thickness or position. Kylari, clearly frustrated, and more than a little panicked by the fact that Squall didn't even appear to be putting any effort into the shield at all, began to desperately leach the life from all around.

Squall didn't even have to exert himself to remain on an equal power level. As Kylari leached the life into herself, just as it had when she had done the same to Galbadia Garden, Squall automatically absorbed the death energy released in the process. Only this time he was neither recovering from a previous magical drain, sharing the energy with a knight recovering from a previous magical drain, nor having his magic levels blocked by a knight.

Still, even with the full powers of a sorcerer, augmented by death energy, Squall and Kylari were evenly matched. That was, after all, how it was meant to be. The sorceress powers balanced by the sorcerer powers in every respect. And yet Kylari's powers had no innate abilities that could be used in combat, for the innate ability of a sorceress was that of creating life; barren women had always gone to a sorceress for her blessing, and almost always a child had resulted afterwards. But Squall...

Allowing the power to continue flowing through him, defending him with an almost-sentience, Squall turned his concentration inwards. First he summoned his feelings of Guilt, remembering all the things that he'd done, all the destruction he'd caused the world. With the Guilt came Resentment, resentment of those who had never known the burdens they had forced him to shoulder, the responsibility he'd had to accept. Anger accompanied the Resentment, a fierce burning fury at Hyne for her meddling - millennia ago now - interference that had forced the world, and himself, down this path to this end. Hatred came too, against fate and every other thing that had conspired to make him who and what he was. And lastly, Betrayal... Betrayal so recent, so cutting. Betrayal both personal and impersonal. The Betrayal of the dead, conspiring to force the last sorcerer to his doom...and the Betrayal of his friends, whom he had Betrayed to their deaths.

The emotions raged, tangible on another plane - the grey lands, and beyond them the lands of the dead. They attracted attention, like blood in the sea attracting Sawfish. Squall knew the sorceresses had managed to attain this crude method of calling a soul to possess a Weapon, but sorcerers were in their element with death, and their methods were much more refined, even if they had never judged the price of this particular ability worth paying.

Focussing now on the memories he had drawn from Kylari's mind, memories of the past and the people who had shaped her, he searched... Or rather, he ~called~.

Like a siren's song, Squall's emotions filtered through the memories, attracting those in the memories whilst repelling those who were not. A small group gathered, staring hungrily at the emotions they longed to feel once more, uncaring whether they were positive emotions or not, knowing that they would not be able to feel their current torment once they were allowed into the grey lands and a pseudo-life.

***

She was getting desperate, and yet she could not draw any more life energy for fear of the tower crumbling around her. True, the sorcerer would also be caught in the destruction, but the outcome would be too much at the hands of fate for her to be willing to risk it. She found scant consolation in the fact that the sorcerer didn't appear to have enough energy to release himself from the manacles. It was only scant consolation, however, as he seemed to be paying no attention to the fight at all.

The first indication she had that something, somewhere, had actively shifted the balance in his favour, was when she glimpsed movement out of the corner of her eye. Movement that she knew was impossible. She had made the Weapon dormant, and if the sorcerer had awoken it then its actions would not have been subtle. She had also ensured that nothing could get in or out of the tower without using some sort of portal magic - not that anything ~willingly~ approached the tower with its dark aura.

Another flicker of movement, this time in the periphery of both eyes, and her concentration wavered for a fraction of a second. Sweat starting to appear on her forehead, Kylari sternly told herself to ignore whatever minor trick the sorcerer was trying to pull. If he had been able to do anything major, he would already have...

Thoughts and concentration fled as the flickering movement shifted into full view and five shadows resolved into five figures. Five wraith-like figures. Five ~familiar~, ~dead~ figures... Her breath caught, eyes widening in panic.

"No..." The choked denial emerged as a whimper. Her gaze shot from her Father - a mercenary who had abandoned her mother and her - to her Mother - whom she had killed in childbirth - to Eldriech - the mercenary who'd claimed to be her father - to Claira - the mercenary who was supposed to have inherited Aesa's powers - to a figure whose name she didn't know, but recognised anyway - a member of the militia, led by Edea Kramer, who had hunted her down like a rabid dog.

Distracted and mentally crippled by her emotions, Kylari didn't notice as her fragile control of the sorceress powers began to slip. The energy, still pouring out of her, but now with no direction, roiled and churned, expressing the heaving of Kylari's mind. As Kylari retreated inwards in a futile attempt to escape the return of her past to haunt her, the sorceress powers followed...

***

The resulting backlash destroyed the sorceress and the souls of her tormentors completely; it was somehow fitting that the canker at the root of the problem should ultimately destroy itself. Unfortunately the tower was also vaporised by the raw magic as it exploded outwards, frantically attempting to find a successor more suitable than that which it had been presented with.

Squall waited stoically for it to return, idly wondering what would happen if he killed himself before it came back.

With no one to see, no one to be harmed - either accidentally or deliberately - he was hovering in the air with his wings spread wide. The feeling of feathers being ruffled and caressed by the air - a weaker being might rather say 'buffeted' - was indescribable, like something he'd been waiting to do all his life. Maybe he had - he no longer cared. All he wanted - or could want now his stronger emotions had been devoured summoning so many souls - was to get this over with so he could know peace.

Finally it returned, approaching in a deceptively thin ribbon of light. The wind travelling with it gave full voice to the magic's displeasure. Waiting, already accepting the inevitable, and that it would be both painful and - eventually at least - deadly, Squall was surprised when the magic made no attempt to enter him, instead coiling sinuously around him before tugging sharply away.

For a moment he wondered if Kylari had, somehow, impossibly, managed to make herself into a being of pure magic. Fortunately she had not. What the magic was doing, he realised, seeing thin tendrils of magic not his own pulling away to rejoin the rest of the powers, was first reclaiming that which it considered to belong to it.

Which in turn meant, this was ~really~ going to hurt.

Without warning the ribbon of magic speared into his chest. It burned, both hot and cold, making his blood literally boil whilst the beads of sweat that broke out on his skin instantly froze. He was vaguely aware that he was screaming semi-incoherently, the sound muffled by the hissing and bubbling of the blood in his ears. There were words in the screams, barely articulate cries of 'no', and 'stop', and 'why', and 'God'; and the most coherent yet, a heart-wrenching sob of 'Did this have to be the way?'.

After that there were no more screams, though the agony continued. He could not scream for breathing, nor breathe for screaming, no matter the pain inside. Slowly his mind was giving up, deliberately numbing itself in a last attempt at self-preservation. Isolated from both the pain and his own body, Squall slowly began to understand and feel - in a limited manner - the powers warring within him as he slipped into unconsciousness.

***

_The battling energies coiled and twisted about each other in eye-watering shapes, opalescent white stark contrast against glossy black. There was no quarter given by either, and yet the flow of movement was oddly balanced, oddly synchronised. As the powers of life overwhelmed the powers of death in one place, at the same time the powers of death would overwhelm the powers of life in another. They were diametrically opposed, just as they went to opposite genders, and yet they were such elementary forces that they could not simply cancel one another out._

Slipping deeper into unconsciousness, his mind operating at a level never normally achieved by mortal creatures, Squall, god-chosen and god-touched sorcerer, watched the magic inside himself and learned.

_The energies still battled, perhaps a little weaker, perhaps, with their minor sentience, sensing that their battle could neither be lost nor won completely by either side. A third energy appeared, small, insignificant compared to the white or black, but it shone with a deep and vibrant red. Where the white and black energies were fluid almost to the point of insubstantiality, the red was solid but transparent, like a ruby glowing with an inner light._

_The magic lunged for the new energy, sensing that in subverting it to their own existence lay the key to winning or losing the battle. But the crystal proved impervious to their attempts to absorb it. In fact, slowly, across the surface of the magical energies, but faster and more visibly where they touched both each other and the crystal, a change was taking place._

_It took a while before it was noticeable, but gradually the opalescent whiteness of the sorceress powers was darkening, becoming a shimmering silver that continued to darken. But the glossy darkness was not unaffected; it was lightening, taking on a decidedly grey sheen that continued to lighten._

_The magic tried to withdraw from the crystal as quickly as it had attempted to subsume it - only to discover that not only was the crystalline energy in the same metaphysical space, it was also the _container _of that space..._

Being possessed by a God had affected Squall more than either he or the God had realised. In a sense it had caused his ability to control magic to advance to a divine level, meaning that his energy - the red crystal the magical energies had attempted to drain - was protected against a direct attack or attacks by magic of any kind.

_The change continued as the energies swirled agitatedly about their prison, until it was no longer possible to distinguish one from the other. Like calling to like, the energies slowly drifted together, merging seamlessly into one mass of pure neutral power that was neither life nor death, but encompassed both realms..._

Despite being a sorcerer, Squall was still a mortal, still intrinsically as much a creature of life and death as any other with the ability to live and die. When the magic had attacked his energy it had not been able to draw upon it, but it had managed to draw the essence of his mortality. The life magic had tainted itself with the fact that he would one day die, whilst the death magic had tainted itself with the fact that he was alive. In the most ultimate of ironies, what should have killed him and caused the destruction of the world had, in fact, made him into the very thing that Kylari had sought to become. He had, in essence, become a demi-god.

***

With Squall's return to consciousness came a whole new mix of things. For a start he was in a crumpled heap on the ground - no great surprise there since he'd been at a considerable height when the magic returned. For seconds - again, due to the height he'd fallen - he was in considerable pain, and had at least three broken ribs and one leg broken in two places. For third - which was where it started to get weird - he wasn't dead, and his vision was...well, he wasn't seeing in the spectrum that people normally saw in.

The world around him had taken on an almost monochrome state, everything glowing white, black or a shade of grey. The only thing stopping it from being monochrome were the streaks of colour - reminiscent of the appearance of an aura - that seemed to be associated with various states. For instance, where his left leg was broken in two places was tainted an unhealthy green-blue.

Squall sighed, wincing as his broken ribs protested, and reflected that it was times like this that made him wish sorcerers were proficient in healing. The GFs were gone, being creatures of pure magic, and the magical creatures of the world were no longer magical. Even the Weapon he was sitting on had become inert. Simply put, whilst the magic feeding into the world had been split between life and death, everything had used either one sort or the other - or, in the case of sorcerers, had used a conduit to access the one they didn't use directly. But now the powers had combined and become neutral, they neutralised the ability to use magic at all...

He frowned. If the magic had neutralised the ability in everything else, why could he still feel it, waiting just behind his consciousness for his commands? And why hadn't he died? The magic should have ripped him to shreds and then turned upon the world. Were the two linked? They had to be...

Realisation dawned slowly. Whatever had protected him from the magic had also protected his ability to use the magic. He could use the neutral magic - and in theory that meant he could also use all the abilities of both sorcerers and sorceresses, which meant he could heal himself.

Cautiously, mindful of the fact that he was dealing with a ~lot~ of raw power, Squall cast a cure spell on his broken leg. The results thoroughly justified his caution. Not only was his leg completely healed, so was the rest of him, and he felt invigorated - as though he had also caste haste and aura spells on himself, or junctioned a powerful GF. Clearly his problem was going to be a case of controlling so much magic...

Hysterical laughter began bubbling out of him as he realised just how ironic his fears were. It didn't matter if he accidentally put too much power into a spell, the only person left to kill on the planet was himself!

Laughter turned to great shuddering sobs as he remembered one of the last people to die. The last person to be taken from him...

Seifer.

His knight...

Oh god...his ~knight~ - the only barrier between him and insanity.

Squall sobered up instantly, peering at the wetness on his hands. The crimson wetness. Blood tears. He wasn't going to ~go~ insane - he already ~was~ insane...

So... All he really had left to do was destroy the world. But...he had no anger with which to do it. No anger or hatred, no resentment or betrayal, no guilt - he had sacrificed them all to bait Kylari into her destruction. A destruction that had resulted in his loss... Yes, in sorrow he could destroy this world. He could destroy it as Ultemecia had planned to do, but he would draw fully on the capabilities of both powers; he would destroy it and remake it.

He would rewrite history itself.

AN: Well, just four chapters to go now...


	10. Interlude of Realities

AN: Finally you get to learn who the 'puppet master' is. Cookies to reviewers, pocky to those who figure out where this all ends up (this is free n easy pocky if you know your final fantasy).

**Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc ~ Endgame ~ Chapter Ten ~ Interlude of Realities **

He began slowly, wary of the blended magic within him, but as it remained stable he became more confident. The power he was handling - having nothing to fear with the point of insanity already passed - grew in intensity until it was visible as massive tendrils of darkness that flared with a white aura. The world, reality, began to warp and bend, the threads of the spell that he was weaving fluttering madly as they began to catch the passing time in their web. This part of the spell, the first part, was most crucial. It had to be strong enough to hold without his direct and constant input, otherwise, whilst he gathered in the past, there was a risk that the spell would fracture and break, forcefully pushing him into the nearest past moment and leaving him trapped there, whilst scrambling what would then be his future. That was if the backlash didn't kill him outright.

When he was confident that the spell structure would hold, the strands thick enough that they didn't even tremble as the passing moments were caught within the web of time compression, he began to create the second part of the spell. It was exactly the same as the first, except it was a mirror image and worked in reverse, and, where the first part had been created directly behind him - for the future could only be caught as it became the present, not before - this part was created directly in front of him. Once again, reality warped and bent, but where the flow of time had hindered the construction of the first part, it no longer flowed from the present into the past, as the future was no longer flowing into the present. But the second spell structure was no less sturdy than the first. Unlike the first, however, Squall could not simply tie off the magic and leave it to maintain itself, for the second portal had to be actively ~used~.

Carefully, aware of the magic surrounding him in a way that neither he, nor anyone else, had ever been before - nor ever would again - Squall reached through the second spell structure, using millions of hair-fine tendrils of magic to hook the closest past moments and drag them into the second spell structure. Over and over he repeated the process, the drain on his magic so great that he was only able to continue as long as he did because he was using ~all~ the magic at his disposal - all the magic in the world.

Eventually he had brought as much of the past into the 'just past' moment as he required. Now, standing in the 'now' moment, between the 'just to come' and 'just past' moments formed by the spell structures, he began the most delicate part of the process - the merging of all the moments into the 'now' moment.

The construction of the two spell structures, whilst requiring a certain degree of skill, had relied more on brute strength and raw power, and the drawing of the past into the 'just past', whilst requiring a certain delicacy of touch, had required stamina more than anything else. But to merge the moments into a single 'now' moment, a moment with which he could also interact with any particular one of the moments within its scope, ~that~ would require a skill that no sorceress - even Ultemecia, who had successfully created a small area of time compression - had ever demonstrated.

Slowly he wove the strands of magic that would draw the two moments together and encase him in a reality where only he could exist. A reality where he could change the past and literally watch the ripples of his changes pass through all the moments that had come after. It would, of course, only work to a point. He had no wish to experience - however briefly - the omnipotence of a God to whom time held no meaning. He might be insane, cheeks stained with blood tears that would not stop flowing, but he wasn't mad. In all honesty, he probably wasn't insane either, but the lack of a full range of emotions made it difficult to tell.

The weaving became ever more complex, some strands passing though his body, some starting or ending at his body. Slowly though, as he continued to weave, the strands began to tighten, drawing the edges of the spell structures together in a supernatural parody of sewing two pieces of fabric together. It was hard to concentrate, with the perception of reality warring with the attempt to perceive and understand the new, multi-layered reality. The way the moments lay, one after another, still clinging to some semblance of chronological order despite having been compressed to a single point, was rather like a squashed book.

Squall was dripping with sweat when he finally tied off the last strands of magic. He was completely enclosed within a timeless bubble of time, a paradoxical creation that was unaffected by the reality that, as far as it was concerned, no longer existed, and yet that reflected every change - and the consequences of every change - into that reality.

But there was no time to rest, no time at all in fact, and if it hadn't been for the magic that made him an integral part of the bubble, Squall would have been trapped, timeless, unable to free himself, but also unable to die - or live. Reaching into the 'past', Squall began to alter what had, in reality, occurred, watching carefully the extent and effects of each ripple caused by his changes, no matter how small. The devil was truly in the details. One small slip and Kylari would exist once more, and yet removing her from the past completely was not an option, for then history would branch off into a completely different reality. Such an occurrence brought with it the risk that his bubble of time compression would then be shunted away from the reality he wished to change, and that could not be allowed.

Finally, it was done. History had been altered, and though, to anyone who knew what the past ~had~ been, it seemed radically different, it was a superficial difference for the most part. But no one would remember, circumstances would make certain of that. It was why the end had been preordained as coming after everyone had died - a reborn, or resurrected, soul simply could not retain its memories. At least, not for long, and not without ending up more than a little insane. Of course, there were exceptions to the rule, but they were mainly where a reborn soul remembered bits of its previous life. Squall wasn't, however, certain how much Seifer, as his knight, would remember...

It was the one unknown that he'd had no choice but to allow. Such circumstances as these had never before - and with any luck would never again occur. Seifer had been his knight, and yet of the two of them only Seifer would be resurrected, for Squall's reward was, quite simply, ~not~ being resurrected - at least not in his old life. But Ultemecia's time compression, however small in comparison, had left its mark on Seifer's mind - something that, in theory, it shouldn't have done. Which meant that, in all likelihood, unless he deliberately erased Seifer's memories of history as it had occurred, the blond would, once again, be the exception to the rule and be able to remember both. It would drive him, very quickly, insane. But there had been no other options and, when all was said and done, Squall was willing to make the sacrifice - though it would haunt him for the rest of his existence - in order to finally know peace. Besides, there ~was~ the option of ~making~ him forget. With that thought firmly in mind, Squall readied himself to end the time compression.

Ending time compression and remaining alive was a process that required a delicate balance of skill, strength and speed. As soon as he removed the strand of magic holding the compressed moments together - the keythread - they would immediately begin to unravel on their own, flailing around as they did so. Considering the fact that many of the strands were either directly or indirectly woven into his very being, this was, obviously, extremely dangerous. But that was if you wanted to survive the end of time compression. Surviving the end of time compression would be counter to everything that Squall was trying to achieve and so, fully aware that this was probably the slowest and most painful way to die, Squall severed the keythread of the time compression bubble...

Painful was an understatement. The magic literally ripped him apart, on both a physical ~and~ magical level, and the only mercy was also a curse. Because where Squall had stood had been isolated from time, the intense agony was unable to touch a small part of his existence. But because, as the bubble sprang back into line with the new reality, the magic took parts of his existence with it, he simultaneously suffered decades of pain.

At last, the time compression nearly finished settling into the pattern of the new reality, Squall finally felt his life fading, and everything going cold and dark...

***

When he regained awareness, it was only the weight of knowledge, ~dead~ knowledge, crashing through his mind that reassured Squall that all had gone as planned. Seifer was staring down at him, a frown of concern upon his face - although he had to know that Squall was, and would be, just fine. After all, they were both dead. There wasn't really too much more that could happen to them.

"Hey." Seifer said, softly, sounding as though he didn't quite know what tone to take. Squall blinked and slowly sat up. Although he had been expecting it, the lack of pain was still something of a surprise. Dimly he realised that he must be in shock - if such a thing were possible for the dead - because there was really no other way to explain why he felt emotionally drained... Unless...

Almost as soon as he thought the question, the answer came to him. When he had summoned the souls of the dead using his emotions, he had sacrificed those emotions completely. If they ever returned, they would do so incredibly slowly. A tear crept from the corner of one eye. He couldn't feel anger, or hatred, or resentment - not even when he felt the anomaly in the new reality that was the consequence of Edea's misunderstanding, still present, as he had been warned, despite that understanding now never having happened. Neither could he feel any guilt for doing what he had done, nor betrayal for what he knew he had yet to do to the man he loved the most, and who deserved it least.

"Squall?" Seifer sounded worried, and looked it too. Squall, too overwhelmed by the thought that his work was ~finally~ over, ignored him and flopped backwards onto the...well, whatever it was that he'd woken up on. It certainly wasn't a bed - more like a solid block of nothingness.

***

Seifer...understood; had understood in those few moments just before he'd died, but he hadn't really ~known~. That was what had hurt, more than he'd believed possible, the sudden knowledge of everything Squall had been responsible for, everything he'd ~still~ lied about - even if the lies had been by omission. It hurt in ways he'd vowed never to let himself be hurt again - not after Ultemecia - and yet, because he also ~understood~, he couldn't hate Squall for what he'd done.

If anything, he loved him more, knowing that his sorcerer was, when all was said and done, just a man...just human; fallible, selfish, prey to hopes and desires, fears and insecurities. A man who had been gifted a terrible legacy and a worse destiny. No wonder he'd been so angry when Yevon's possession had reawakened his knowledge of what he had to do. Seifer wasn't sure what he'd have done in Squall's place - probably crumbled and failed, letting the world go to hell.

Not, he thought, that it hadn't gone there anyway. But he knew - as did the ranks on ranks of souls awaiting rebirth - that Squall had ultimately been successful. That though, was the extent of his knowledge in that regard. No one he had spoken to seemed to know what Squall had done, what sort of world they would be returning to. He wondered if Yevon himself knew, or if that too had been part of his 'experiment' - to see what new world the last sorcerer would forge from the ashes of the old world.

Seifer snorted. He wanted to hate the God, Yevon...really, he did. But his knowledge that it was really Hyne who was at fault left little room for hate on that front. He'd tried to hate for Squall's sake, for the trials his sorcerer had been forced to endure, but... Yevon had promised Squall something, something that, again, no one he had asked seemed to have any knowledge of, and that meant Yevon, for whatever reason, didn't want them to know. Seifer was quite certain, however, that Squall would tell him what it was. After all, there was no need for secrets now...was there?

***

Squall supposed it seemed simple. He had destroyed - or allowed the destruction of - the world, and all its inhabitants. In doing so he had remade the world, setting it on a path no longer bound for a short and bloody trip to hell. Not only that, but with precious few exceptions, none of the returned souls would ever - while alive at least - remember what had happened...

Little consolation when he would be able to remember every detail, every death, each time he looked at someone. It was an eventual escape from those memories that Yevon had promised him.

Unfortunately, like all deals that seemed too good to be true, there was a catch. It wasn't, however, a price that Squall was unwilling to pay, no matter that it would destroy his heart for good. For the 'bad' memories wouldn't be all he lost. He would lose all the memories in his mind, gradually, from the oldest to the newest. He would forget the too-clear memories of his ancestors, his prior lives, his childhood as 'Squall Leonhart' - something the GFs had never managed to take - his memories of Garden, SeeD, Ultemecia...and Seifer... Only then would he begin to forget about the millions of lives he had, however indirectly, taken. Only then would the burden of guilt - not that he felt guilty, but some part of him knew he ~should~ feel guilty - be lifted. Only then would he cease to be Squall Leonhart, and all that the name entailed.

Seifer was most certainly not going to like it...but then, he had the solution for Seifer. One final sin to add to the multitude of others to his name. One final sin to ensure the man he would have - and nearly had - sacrificed ~everything~ for would have a chance at happiness without him. One, final, sin...

***

When Seifer finally leaned over Squall, having reached the end of his wandering thoughts and realising that the brunette wasn't going to sit up again, he discovered that the younger soul had, to all intents and purposes, gone to sleep. It had been something Selphie had mentioned in her typically enthusiastic welcome to him. Souls could 'sleep' in order to try and contact the living through their dreams, of course, it rarely worked, and it required someone to actually be alive, but Seifer supposed it might be a good excuse for souls to - however briefly - escape the burden of knowing everything.

He shuddered as he remembered the 'Guardian of the Dead' that Selphie had pointed out in hushed tones. It had been human, once, a long time ago when it had been called - and responded to the name - Troy Masterson. He'd recognised that name; how could he not? Troy Masterson had been one of Squall's ancestors, a sorcerer who, along with several others, had sacrificed himself to destroy a sorceress. Besides its looks, the thing bore no resemblance to a human now. It was the price, so Selphie had explained, that was demanded of a Guardian of the Dead - memories slowly eroded away, more surely than a GF could take them. Emotions were nothing without memories, and so, if a soul remained a Guardian for long enough they became puppets acting on mere instinct and relying on skills so ingrained that they didn't require memory.

"You have questions you wish answered." Seifer turned, instinctively reaching for the gunblade he knew wasn't there. Some habits were ingrained so deep in life that they lingered into death - at least for a while. The figure who had spoken could only be one person...if you could call a God that. Yevon, loathed and reviled as the God of Death, the antithesis of Hyne, Goddess of Life - and yet in reality it was, if anything, the other way around. Yevon was not merely the God of Death, he was the God of the Cycle, death and rebirth in equal measure, the God of Balance, the Forgotten God.

"Squall will answer them." He replied, even though Yevon's words had been a statement, not a question. But still, the doubt remained. Squall had kept things from him even after promising not to...would death change him so much if it had not erased his own instinct to reach for his gunblade? After all, they'd only been using the weapons for half their lives, Squall had been keeping secrets since before he'd left the Orphanage, secrets that had only grown as he did.

"~I~ will answer them - Squall is...not himself anymore, will not be for a long time, perhaps will never be." Seifer tried his best to ignore the doubts at the back of his mind, but Yevon's words struck a chord. He knew Squall had sacrificed some of his emotions, perhaps forever, and that couldn't ~not~ make a difference. He was also aware, painfully so, that Squall could not have retained his sanity with that amount of magic flowing through him.

"He will be, I will help him." He glanced over his shoulder at the still 'sleeping' Squall, but Yevon's brief headshake was clear in his peripheral vision. Cold certainty gripped him, gripped his heart and mind, making his legs weak and threatening to bring him to his knees. "What did you promise him?" He grated the question out, fearing the worst. Yevon was staring at him kindly, but there was sorrow and pity in his gaze.

"Freedom." Yevon sighed. "He does not wish to return to a reality that would only torment him with what was, for the rest of his life. His mind would break beyond repair." Seifer waited; there had to be more, because if Squall sought freedom from the memories then he could neither return to life - if what Yevon was saying was true - nor remain in the Lands of the Dead. "He wishes to become a Guardian of the Dead, to atone for his actions, and to forget."

***

It was like flying through a void, nothing except darkness, nothing to indicate whether he was actually moving at all, and yet he knew he ~was~ moving, circling the 'dead' world he had created, watching, waiting...

He hadn't just come here to escape Seifer's inevitable questions - Yevon could deal with those, he was tired of being the 'strong' one, the one with all the 'answers' - rather he had come here to watch as the people he had killed were resurrected. It was atonement...in a twisted sense, for although he felt no guilt, he knew he should, and therefore he knew he should somehow pay for what he had done. Yes, it was a duty, but it was something ~he~ had chosen for ~himself~. It was neither destiny, fate, nor karma, just...a decision. A reaction for his action.

His patience was rewarded as bright pin-pricks of light began to appear, slowly at first, then faster and faster until the void was defined as a dark sphere within a void. The dreaming world, the fringe world between the Land of the Living, and the Grey Lands. His attention flickered from one light to another, each representing a resurrected soul, each both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. Enraptured by the brief snatches of lives he glimpsed as he touched hopes and fears, it took a while before Squall noticed that the influx of souls had slowed to a more regular, more balanced level.

It was time to return, time to sever his last tie to destiny...

***

"No." Seifer's rejection of Yevon's statement was firm and flat. He would not believe it. Not from a God he knew - all too well - had manipulated everyone like puppets, but most especially Squall.

"He's telling the truth." For a moment Seifer thought - hoped - he'd imagined it. Prayed - though he didn't know who to - that his ears were deceiving him and Squall had actually said 'he's ~not~ telling the truth'. But moment fled, and cold despair gripped his heart and soul. He turned, slowly, afraid he would fall and barely aware of Yevon discretely leaving them alone.

"Squall?" A million questions in one word, all answered by the sorrow in the brunette's ice-blue eyes.

"I'm not human anymore - in any sense of the word." Squall sounded as sane as he'd ever been, but Seifer knew that was no indication of sanity. Ultemecia and Kylari had both been insane - and the same person, sort of, but that was beside the point - and they had both been able to hold a perfectly rational conversation, at least as long as certain subjects were avoided.

Slowly Squall sat up. He could feel his thoughts whirling in a dozen different directions, the manic laughter at the back of his mind making it hard to keep track of what he was saying, what he was doing...even who he was talking to. He looked down and found himself suddenly and inexplicably fascinated by the wrinkles on his hands, the creases at the joins, the way the skin stretched and bunched as he clenched and opened his fist.

"But a Guardian? I've seen what they become." Seifer shuddered. "~They're~ not human. You...if anything you're ~too~ human." He watched as Squall looked up sharply from his examination of his own hand, noting with a touch of fear the long seconds it took for confusion to clear from the brunette's eyes.

"Seifer..." The tone was reverent and heart-breakingly sorrowful. The blond didn't think twice about kneeling and pulling Squall into his arms, didn't think to question as the brunette pulled back just enough for their lips to meet, didn't think to wonder as a hand threaded into his hair on each side of his head, holding him steady, didn't think...

***

Yevon watched as Squall pulled back from the kiss with Seifer. The blond's expression was dazed - not surprising given he'd just had some fairly major memories altered, and in some cases removed completely. He'd wondered if it would become necessary for him to step in, if Squall would manage to go through with the last, final, irrevocable step. But he had, and, as he and Squall watched, the blond soul vanished, resurrected.

It was over...at long last.

AN: *hums* don't worry, a few more chapters left, so yes, a few more things will get explained - if you have questions, start asking them now, because not everything will get revealed. If I get really bored I may try and pick out anything that isn't explained in the fic itself and explain in an author's note, but don't count on that, review and let me know what you want explained.   
'keythread' comes from the concept of an arch having a keystone - remove the keystone and gravity does the rest *grins*   
Yes, Squall may seem massively OOC but, bear in mind that he ~is~ insane, ~and~ without a handful of emotions. His attention span has gone ~way~ down as a means of coping with the information overload that comes with being dead, but also because of his insanity. Plus he knew he had one last task to, very reluctantly, carry out. He's still having a ~slightly~ rough time.   
As for the emotions, well, he can't feel most of the negative emotions (Anger, Resentment, Guilt, Hate and Betrayal) because he sacrificed them to summon the souls against Kylari. He can feel the positive emotions, but doesn't have the 'experience' of them (e.g. can't remember any 'happy' days as a child - dominated by memories of Ellone leaving). True, he loves and is loved by Seifer, but he doesn't know how much of that was real or whether it was Yevon's meddling, plus it's something that only comes out in the open once Kylari makes herself known, so most of his 'good' memories are somewhat tainted by 'bad' memories.   
Anyone remember the Huffman-encoded binary message that Garden received via Ansiko? Well, since revealing its content is no longer a spoiler at this point, here is the translation: please forgive me pray to yevon and go down fighting

I have no idea how many times I have now attempted to upload this chapter with the correct formatting. For some, truly bizarre reason, seems to take great delight in stripping all the tilde (~) marks and stars (*) I'm using in this fic, which means I have to edit them back in using the html editor. And if I miss something? I have to redo _everything_ *is extremely peeved* Whilst I love the new features that have just recently been added (replying to signed reviews and complete/in progress status indicator), adding new stuff just doesn't make up for not having systems that have been here for ages working correctly.   
*sighs* right, rant over. Please review :)


	11. A New Day Dawning

AN: Epilogue the First - the big reveal of what Squall did, exactly, to the world when he was fiddling with time compression.

**Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc ~ Endgame Chapter Eleven ~ A New Day Dawning**

He woke up to the sound of drunken singing.

***

After stumbling through the darkness to his wardrobe - stubbing his toe on the end of the bed as he went - pulling his uniform on, strapping Hyperion on and picking his three favourite GFs to junction - Eden, Cerberus and Ifrit - Seifer finally made it out of the bedroom and into the lounge area of the Commander's Suite.

The lights, which he hadn't bothered switching on in his bedroom, were already on, and as his eyes were assaulted with sudden brightness, his ears were assaulted with more of the drunken racket.

After a moment his eyes adjusted, and he was able to make out Zell and Quistis. It was, unsurprisingly, Zell who was slouched across the sofa, opened beer in one hand, the other hand conducting an invisible orchestra as he attempted to sing something that sounded vaguely like 'ding dong the bitch is dead'. Quistis, also unsurprisingly, was seated primly in a chair across from the drunken blond, a pained and apologetic expression on her face.

Seifer sighed and wondered why, exactly, he'd given his friends the code to enter his rooms. He knew the reason why of course - it was supposed to be somewhere those who wanted could escape the spotlight...~not~ somewhere they could escape to in order to conduct their drunken celebrations of Ultemecia's death.

Eyes narrowed, he effortlessly cast a water spell. Both his furniture and Zell were soaked, but it was worth it for the drunken blond's reaction. Zell, apparently so far gone that he had no logic left, barely blinked as the water hit him. Instead he stopped singing - mercifully - and turned to Quistis, a faintly bemused expression on his face.

"It's raining." Even Quistis' lips quirked upwards slightly at his comment, but Seifer couldn't restrain his own laughter. Zell didn't seem to notice, instead opting for - finally - passing out and beginning to snore loudly. The beer bottle dropped to the floor with a sodden thud and toppled over. Thankfully there wasn't enough left to slosh out and onto the carpet.

"What in H...Yevon's name are you both doing in here at," he glanced outside, noticing the lightening of the sky in the East, "5am?" Quistis smiled tiredly, and he wondered how long she'd been babysitting Zell.

"He didn't stop drinking after the party, so I thought I'd best keep him out of trouble." He arched an eyebrow at her.

"So you thought you'd get him in trouble with me, you mean?" He snorted and then stretched, feeling his spine click. "Well, he can stay there 'til he wakes up. What's set for today?" Quistis seemed to follow his line of reasoning - that catching a cold and sneezing with a hangover might knock some sense into Zell's head - because she didn't suggest that they cover the soaked blond with a blanket. Instead she pulled out a notepad - something they'd all taken to carrying during the war - and flipped through it.

"Press conference at 10h00, lunch with President Loire and Dr. Odine in Esthar, speech in Galbadia at 15h00, and finally the Ball at General Caraway's Mansion at 19h00." Seifer grimaced.

"I don't suppose there's anything urgent that could come up here at, say, 18h30?" His question earned him a stern look from Quistis. "I know, I know. Must not piss off the Sorceress, right?" He waved her admonitions off. "I just want her to get the point that there is no 'we', or 'us' - is that too much to ask?" The pleading whine of his voice was enough to garner a snicker of laughter - quickly suppressed - from the blonde instructor.

"I guess it's not beyond the realms of possibility that an operative in Trabia might report an unconfirmed sighting of Squall Leonhart." Seifer snorted at the wordy response that, ultimately, boiled down to an 'alright, something'll come up'. Still, his wide smile was genuine, although it faltered as he thought of his rival...

***

Quistis wasn't surprised to see Seifer's expression falter at the mention of Squall. She didn't think any of them would get over what had happened with him any time in the near future. Squall... He had been at the Orphanage with them all, but he...well, after Ellone had left he'd never quite been the same.

Then, one by one, they'd all started attending Garden. Squall had seemed driven, almost possessed in his determination to be the best...but he was too quiet, too introverted, and his achievements were always overshadowed by Seifer's flamboyance.

They'd quietly become rivals, Seifer and Squall, constantly sparring both physically and verbally, and although Seifer always won the verbal matches, the physical matches were much closer. Things had come to a head when Squall had finally been allowed to take the SeeD exam. Whatever had actually taken place, no one was entirely certain, but Seifer and Zell had become SeeDs, and Squall... Squall had been placed on probation, nearly expelled outright, never mind that he too had a scar the exact same as the one he had inflicted on Seifer.

Something had changed on that mission. Squall had become darker, quieter, but when he did speak it was with a sharper and more venomous tongue than they'd ever heard. Unable to make him be more polite, the staff had settled for silence.

Then there had been the fiasco in Timber...the fiasco where they discovered things were not alright in the world, and where Squall joined the sorceress...

Ha, after that things had ~really~ gone downhill. Squall, the few times they'd seen him, fought him after that, had never seemed quite...sane. He'd gone as far as torturing Seifer for information that he had to know the blond didn't have. But still...when all was said and done...

Seifer had gotten lost in time compression after Ultemecia's defeat, and something had happened. He wouldn't tell anyone what it was, but Quistis would have found herself surprised if it wasn't something to do with Squall.

They didn't know, for certain, whether the brunette was alive or not. Quite honestly, as long as he wasn't causing more trouble, Quistis didn't really care. He chosen his own path - hadn't he? - and he had walked down it unerringly, loyal to his sorceress right to the end.

She hoped he was dead.

***

Seifer's thoughts, however, weren't running along the exact same lines as Quistis'. He'd picked up his earlier stumble - probably thought by the blonde to be due to him having just awoken - when he'd almost gone to say a name other than Yevon. The thing was, although he had a vague sense that he'd been going to say a woman's name, he couldn't think what that name was, or why he'd be saying it. Then there were the memories that the mention of Squall's name had triggered...

"Thanks Quistis - I'll leave you to watch sleeping beauty." She snorted at the epithet, but otherwise made no comment as he walked out and into the corridor. The door hissed shut behind him, the lock activating with a quiet snick, and he let himself begin walking as his thoughts turned inwards once more.

Squall Leonhart... His memories of the Orphanage were fuzzy and disjointed at best thanks to the GFs he'd junctioned during the war - not that it stopped him junctioning three at a time now the war was over - but he knew the other boy had been there with the rest of them. Always quiet, and yet always with an aura that made him stand out - at least to Seifer's senses. They hadn't been what you'd call friends, but they hadn't been enemies either...not until Ellone had left the Orphanage without warning. Even then it had been a childish rivalry.

It had escalated once they were both at Garden. Escalated and taken on a dimension that no one had expected - he doubted anyone would believe, even now, that they'd been...rivals with benefits. He suppressed a snort of amusement at how that sounded. But that was how it had been. Until Squall's SeeD exam anyway.

~That~ was one memory he would ~never~ forget. His expression darkened, his forehead creasing in a frown. Yet despite ~knowing~ Squall had turned on him without warning and had attacked, nearly killing him, a hazy memory that said otherwise pushed for his attention. It was nothing more than fragments of impressions, cold wind, the scorching heat of a fire spell ~he~ was casting at ~Squall~...the intent to attack and kill...

Seifer shook his head sharply, but he couldn't dismiss the odd sensation that, as well as everything happening as he remembered, everything had also happened completely differently. There were just too many of those odd fragments that didn't match up with his memories, yet were too ~real~ to be false.

More worrying than his conflicting memories however - for they could be ignored quite easily - was the knowledge that Squall was dead. Seifer had gone to bed that night, as he had every night since Ultemecia's defeat, wondering whether Squall had survived or not, and if he had, where he was hiding. Yet now he knew, with a certainty that was almost frightening, that Squall was indeed dead.

What puzzled him was why the knowledge hurt so much...

***

Months later, and the world was still celebrating the defeat of Ultemecia, and lauding her defeaters as celebrities. None were so popular, however, as Seifer Almasy, Commander of Garden. Seifer didn't mind the attention, he adored it - wasn't this his dream after all? - and he never voiced anything about his 'alternate' memories. Gradually, unsurprisingly given his habitually heavy GF usage, the memories faded and died, leaving only his heart's sorrow for Squall's death for him to ignore.

He never knew that, just like him, certain others were affected by phantom memories. Edea, for instance, often struggled to remember whether it had been Squall or Seifer who had appeared in the Orphanage all those years ago, telling her about SeeD and unwittingly influencing the future. She, however, had told her husband and knight, Cid. But his explanation, that perhaps the sorrow of losing someone she had considered a son, coupled with time compression, had created false memories, was better than the alternative - that she was going insane.

Ellone, too, knew that something strange had happened. But all she could sense was that the flow of time had been disrupted and meddled with, and hadn't that been exactly Ultemecia's intentions with time compression? All she could do was hope that nothing ill came of those changes.

Overall, life went on in blissful ignorance...just as it was meant to...

AN: Well, that's the immediate epilogue, the worm's-eye view of it anyway. Yes, it's on the short side, but that's the way it worked out - the next one is also likely to be quite short. Next up, the God's-eye view of things, which should make the details of what Squall did a little clearer.


	12. Changing Times

AN: Epilogue the Second - um, some more detail and a few hints for where things might eventually go pear-shaped...

**Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc ~ Endgame Chapter Twelve ~ Changing Times**

Yevon was...impressed. Not only had the last sorcerer successfully destroyed and recreated the world, but he had also successfully tweaked time and events to ensure that history would not, this time, repeat itself. Or at least, not to the devastating conclusion that it had come the last time.

Indeed, all that remained was for him to begin the process of leeching the magic from the world. He had the cooperation of the Guardian Forces, although it had not been difficult to obtain, for they were the counterparts to the Guardians of the Dead - the Guardians of the Living. It was they who had prevented absolute disaster when Hyne had first meddled, and they who would now see that the original balance of the world returned, though they would not remain unchanged by the process.

***

As he concentrated on the world, Yevon pondered on the way things had turned out. Truthfully, it hadn't gone entirely as planned, although what - if any - effect that would have on the future of the world, he no longer knew. He hadn't created this world, and so his view of the future was somewhat limited. There was no way to tell how things would progress from here on, besides where he was ensuring the eventual death of magic.

In all honesty, what ~should~ have happened was that Squall destroyed the world, and then Yevon recreated it using Squall's vision as a blueprint...he hadn't expected Squall to merge the magic within himself. Truth be told, Yevon was a little scared of Squall now. The last sorcerer, as strong as a mortal could humanly be, had made himself a demi-god. Not only that, but the way he had done it...well, Yevon wasn't sure if magic would be effective against him, but he did know that any magic Squall cast would be unstoppable. Being a Guardian of the Dead was by far the best place for the brunette - with any luck he would become like his ancestor, forgetting everything except his duty to protect the souls journeying through the Grey Lands.

***

Had Yevon voiced his concerns to Squall the brunette would have laughed, and promptly reassured the God that he in no way wanted to take over. In fact, had Yevon revealed the connection Squall now had to the world, the brunette - if it wasn't for the fact that he could no longer feel anger - might have been quite incensed. But Yevon said nothing, content for now to tweak the world as he saw fit, and content to let Squall sit and consider the way in which he had changed history...

***

Kylari, Askylarian, had been the root of the problem. He had known, if history was to take a less destructive path this time, that Askylarian could not be allowed to make her way to the future as she had before. Somewhere along the line she would need to be stopped - permanently. The solution, knowing, as he did now, the details of her history - in essence, what had set her off on her mad quest for revenge - had been simple. Instead of removing Askylarian, he had simply removed the mercenary who had pretended to be her father.

Now, instead of being taken and used against Aesa - Edea's half-sister - Askylarian had grown up to run the Orphanage with her, inheriting the powers when Aesa finally died of old age. Askylarian continued to run the Orphanage before being fatally injured protecting a caravan from bandits. Her powers, as they should have done originally, passed to Amara - a woman with the caravan - and Askylarian's soul passed peacefully to the Grey Lands to await rebirth.

Eventually the powers had passed from Amara to Salao...Ultemecia's mother.

Of his own history...well, Seifer had always wanted the glory and adulation of the public. Squall had found it quite easy to reverse their roles, making Seifer the hero and himself the villain. The biggest change had been, for some reason, a moot point. His 'new' self was no longer a sorcerer - instead he was...something else. Fortunately something Ultemecia either didn't recognise, or didn't know how to utilise to its full potential.

Squall was still contemplating the changes he'd made in history when Yevon finished tweaking the world's course into the future.

***

"Are you ready?" Yevon's question took a moment to register with Squall, as his thoughts, having lost focus on the changes in history he had caused, had once again scattered.

"Yes." His response was firm. There was no going back, not for him at least...not now he'd made Seifer forget their time together...their bond.

"Are you certain?"

"Yes." His voice was unnaturally bland where once it might have been tinged with anger. Yevon suppressed a shudder. It seemed that lacking negative emotions didn't automatically mean all you felt were the positive ones...then again, Squall had spent all his life learning to repress all emotion, positive or negative.

"Very well." For such a momentous occurrence, the process was disappointingly simple. A gesture, a thought, and it was done, though nothing seemed to have changed. Deep inside Squall's mind though, a connection was...not cut, but muted, and a great weight of knowledge lifted. Though he didn't know what had happened, Squall felt the change and gave a sigh of relief.

Yevon also noticed the change, although he knew what it was. The brunette, as the creator of the new world, had a link that - coupled with his innate abilities as a sorcerer - would allow him to see, to a greater or lesser degree, the future of 'his' world. That link had been muted, not removed completely, but suppressed to inactivity, by the binding that made a Guardian a Guardian. The binding was actually designed to do what it was doing - to suppress all but the slightest precognitive abilities of the dead, enabling the Guardians to know where they would next be needed, but not overwhelming them with the constant awareness that there would always be another threat for them to combat.

As Squall, already knowing where he was now needed, turned away and headed into the Grey Lands towards the Lands of the Dead, Yevon contemplated the other changes that would occur. They would be physical - or rather, metaphysical - changes; height, hair colour, eye colour...things like that. There was no way to determine what form the changes would take, or how extreme they might be. Yevon had seen dark-haired Guardians become blonds, seen midgets become giants, and vice-versa.

As with so many things now, only time would tell.

AN: bleh...well, that's the end if you don't want to read the 'prequel' to a story that won't happen for a looong time (if ever). Although it's less a prequel and more a standalone between-epics chapter.  
Yes, there are a lot of things that remain unresolved here, such as what happens when Seifer et. al die and suddenly know 'everything' again and the consequences of that etc. That's the sort of thing that would potentially be covered in the sequel...but for now you can all just use your own damn imaginations.

This, I'm afraid, is the point where I start ranting again. I am, quite honestly, extremely disappointed with the lack of reviews, not just for this 'book', but for the entire series. It's one of the reasons the last couple of chapters are so small - 11 in particular could have been much longer, but what's the point? Sadly, this is probably both the first and the last 'pure' ffviii epic that I'll ever post.  
Don't get me wrong, this isn't a pity cry for more reviews - I honestly no longer care as far as this arc is concerned - I just needed to get my disappointment off my chest.

Ja ne, minna.


	13. Conflicts and Resolutions

AN: Epilogue the Third, aka Me Clearing up Loose Ends. Realised if all the 'what happens when everyone dies & learns the truth' bit was going to happen, it had to happen here, although there might be flashbacks to it from other perspectives (not gonna say whose as a) I dunno yet, and b) it might give things away) in the later Arcs.

**Book Four of the Sorcerer Arc ~ Endgame ~ Chapter Thirteen ~ Conflicts and Resolutions**

It was heartbreaking, Quistis thought, to see Seifer so open and vulnerable. Not just that, but to see him so openly hurting from so many cruel truths that had awaited them all upon their deaths. Of course, he wasn't the only one to go through the process...no, they'd all had their illusions stripped forcefully away as they passed over, but he was, perhaps, the one with the hardest truths to recognise. They hadn't, after all, discovered that, not only had they been lied to time and again by the person they loved - and who they thought loved them - but that they had also been, effectively, abandoned by them.

She glanced, briefly, towards the silent figure at the shadowy edge of the grey lands. It was only a brief glance though, for like all the dead, she found it highly discomfiting to stare for long at a Guardian...no matter, or perhaps even more so because, that Guardian had once been her friend...her student. But Squall was already beginning to change, as she had learned most Guardians did, and it was easier that way to think of him as someone else...someone she didn't know, and who didn't know her.

But...he did know her. At least, she thought some part of him still might. None of the souls she had spoken to, not even the ones who had been there longest, knew quite how fast a Guardian lost their memories, if it was even a constant speed, or whether it differed, Guardian to Guardian. There had been something though...something she thought she recognised, deep within his eyes when he had saved her from a Shadow Guardian.

She didn't know if all she had seen was the lurking madness within his mind though. So much he had sacrificed, gambling everything to save the world and all his friends yet again. So much that he had steeled himself to do, probably quite certain, at the time, that he would never be forgiven by all those he had betrayed, nor find forgiveness himself for what he had done. Oh, she knew, now, that there were other motives behind his actions - mainly selfless, except for his decision to become a Guardian - and she could understand all too well how, unable to be reborn without consequently threatening the existance of the world himself, and unwilling to remain with the memories of his actions and fears of the reactions of those who died and learned the truth, he had decided to become a Guardian... She also knew that Seifer too understood - on some unconscious level that he was refusing to acknowledge...

It didn't change a thing though, seeing Seifer, sprawled on the ground at Squall's feet, shuddering as he wept and cursed alternately. It hadn't changed a thing seeing him when he was still standing either, screaming and pleading with the impassive Guardian, even going so far as to beat his fists upon Squall's chest and shake him by the shoulders - or try to. Squall had stood, as immovable and impassive as a statue, not even blinking as Seifer crumpled to the ground. Nor would it change a thing later, when Squall would turn without warning and start into the grey lands, dragging Seifer along behind him as the blond clung to his leg, until Selphie and Irvine prised them apart, pulling Seifer back into the safety of the lands of the dead.

Quistis wondered if Seifer would ever let go enough to try and see the other side of the coin...Squall's side. Right now the blond was stubbornly clinging to his humanity, to his ego and conscience, and the pain and hurt that had come with his death. All he could see was that Squall had saved him from Ultemecia, only to use him and then discard him, just as she also had done. Well, it was a bit more complicated than that, she conceded. Squall had truly loved Seifer...but Squall had also been highly aware that his duty had to come first, and that it would demand a sacrifice of great value...his love, possibly for eternity.

Though it sounded callous, even to herself, Quistis didn't think that Squall and Seifer - once soul mates - would ever be reunited. What had happened had changed them both, Squall on a more fundamental level perhaps than Seifer, and where their two halves had once fitted together to seamlessly form a whole...now she could sense they would not.

***

Zell thought, for perhaps the first time ever, he might feel sorry for Seifer. Not that he would admit it, least of all to the blond, but...well, yeah...the guy was having a tough break, maybe the toughest break in a life that really hadn't been the easiest. He'd gone from being an orphan, trying to make his mark in SeeD, constantly being overshadowed by a guy he really had a crush on (and who was, even worse, a year younger), joining the wrong side in a major war, being defeated by aforementioned love interest/rival/junior, and being humiliated and cast aside by the woman he'd sworn alliegance to, to being used, lied to, and ultimately discarded again when he'd finally thought he'd found his soul mate.

All in all, Seifer's actions and emotions were of little surprise to Zell.

Zell's own soul mate, Quistis - though it'd taken them a while to figure it out when they were alive - was sitting off to one side of him, staring contemplatively at Seifer and quite blatantly ~not~ staring at Squall. He didn't blame her. Guardians were downright freaky...and more so when you knew the...the ~thing~ you were staring at had once been a living, breathing, ~feeling~ person...a friend.

He still considered Squall a friend. No matter whether he'd been a sorcerer or not, Zell, like Quistis, had been dead long enough to come to terms with his own feelings and views on everything he had learned on dying. Unlike Quistis, though, he had percieved Squall's actions in terms of more logical values. Squall, obviously, had known that the world was going to end. Faced with that outcome, he had then been presented with two options leading to that outcome - either he, Squall, destroyed the world, or Kylari, Askylarian, or whatever you wanted to call her, destroyed the world. It was the options after the destruction of the world that had caused Squall to make the decision to destroy the world himself.

He understood Squall's decision to keep the truth of the matter from everyone. Yes it had been, essentially, a lie, maybe even a betrayal...but he also knew that, in Squall's shoes, he too would have chosen to keep it a secret...even from Quistis. Of course, Zell also doubted that, if he'd really been in Squall's shoes, he wouldn't have been a hypocrit and told Quistis anyway. But then, that was supposedly how fate worked, right? Choosing the best person for the job and all that.

No, he understood everything Squall had done had been of tactical sense...right up until the end. The end was where it went...flaky...soft...~awry~.

Something had happened...somewhere along the line...that had distorted the fundamental outcome. Squall had changed when he had taken in both halves of the sorcerous magics, or rather, he had changed before then, and the magics had then been changed by him, so that he had become...something more... Something more than a sorcerer, and yet something less than a god...perhaps.

But far from simply erasing Seifer's memories and then attempting to discern what Squall's change meant for the final part of the plan, for Squall's 'reward', Yevon had simply made Squall a Guardian. Maybe it meant that Yevon, God of the Dead, already knew what Squall had become and what making him a Guardian would do... Maybe it meant that Yevon, the God who had made the world originally and who had shaped them in his image, was as flawed as they... Whichever it was, Zell had a sickening feeling that it didn't bode well for anyone...or anything...

***

Rinoa, like Seifer, had been in for some hard truths when she'd died. It wasn't, however, quite as bad for her, since she'd had time enough in her previous death to accept all the things she'd learned then. Things such as the fact that Squall didn't love her, had never really loved her, and that he'd genuinely been acting in her - as well as Garden's - best interest the day he'd turned her out.

Learning exactly how far Squall would go to fulfil a duty he felt he had to fulfil...well, that had been a revelation to her. She couldn't, as led by her heart as she was, conceive of how ~anything~ could come before love. Couldn't understand how Squall could, seemingly so easily, throw away Seifer's love and trust, not only for a lifetime, but for all eternity...

Rinoa had quickly been reborn into the world, and she didn't think she would ever linger long in the lands of the dead again.

***

Selphie and Irvine, as two of the earliest casualties in the war against Kylari - a war that they had then gone on to live a lifetime never knowing about - had perhaps had the least adjustment to make of those who had been closest to Squall. After all, they too had played a complicit part in bringing about his actions, and then, in the end, enforcing that he see it through. It had been Selphie and Irvine who had led the spirits that commanded Edea to kill Seifer. That, perhaps, was the only thing that they regretted about Squall's decision to become a Guardian; that they could not seek their absolution from him, although they both knew that he would give it. He knew too well the manipulations of a God to deny that they had been powerless to do otherwise. But what he didn't know, maybe, was that they too could ease the burden he was trying to escape in forgetfulness. They too knew how much it hurt to do what had to be done...

Like Rinoa, Selphie and Irvine had quickly chosen to be reborn, to forget at least for a short while.

***

Edea, like Quistis, understood Squall's plight, understood all too well what it meant, what it felt like to stain your hands with blood so that others might remain innocent, might have a chance at life. She had long done the same under the sanity of Adel's rule, and to a degree afterwards too, protecting the orphanage from all those who might seek revenge on those whose only sin was to be born of the 'wrong' parents.

No, Edea understood, Squall, but she also understood Seifer, and mourned with him for the loss of what might have been, and what would now, as Quistis had also seen, never be. Squall was no longer anything like what he had once been. He had changed completely, on a physical and meta-physical level through Yevon's meddling, and on a psychological level through his experiences and decision to forget everything. Squall, once more, was no longer a part of either world. He was no longer simply another dead soul - even that of a sorcerer - but he was not a God either. Instead he was somewhere in between, a foot in one world and a foot in the other, unable to fit in either.

Seifer...she feared for Seifer for a different reason. He was clinging to his humanity as the last thing that he could understand, and that was all well and good, but...one shed ones humanity on death with good reason. Humanity could not cope with death, not without warping and corrupting, and the emotional turbulence that Seifer was experiencing would only hasten the inevitable twisting of his being. If he did not make the choice to be reborn soon...she feared for what he would become, for what he might go on to be and do.

Seifer was not the only one she feared for though. She was an old soul, and she had been through the cycle of death and rebirth many, many times before. She remembered each passage now she was dead, and she could sense things changing, could sense ~Yevon~ changing... Something was not as it should be, as though there were a sickness, an abcess somewhere in the lands of the dead, poisoning the God's mind and existance.

As yet it was still so faint as to be almost unnoticable, just a suggestion of inattention when Yevon would pause in his tasks or his conversation, look lost for a moment, and then pick up again exactly where he had left off without seeming to realise that his mind had wandered briefly. Or the times when, suddenly, he would become fascinated by the working of his own hands and spend several minutes clenching and unclenching his fists, watching the play of skin over muscle and bone.

No, Edea was certain, whatever was causing the problem, it was only going to get worse with time...and a mad God boded ill for everyone.

She glanced over at where Squall had been, but the Guardian was gone, presumably into the grey lands once more. If Yevon were to...to do what? Go completely insane, fall, disappear? Well, Squall...Squall was the next most powerful being to Yevon, though not nearly as powerful as the God, but he still far outclassed any of the other Guardians. If something were to happen to Yevon, or Yevon were to do something and needed stopping...it would once again fall to Squall to lead them through the troubled times and into safety. And if that happened...who were to say that he would do it...or if he did...what he would have to sacrifice...have to become...as a consequence...

***

Seifer could feel their pity, could feel their watching eyes as they crawled over his huddled form. He'd thought his life had been pretty good. He'd thought he'd managed to be 'the orphan made good'. He'd thought...well, he'd thought a lot of things. And then, inevitably, he'd come to the end of his life...and he'd been brutally slapped to the ground with the truth.

He'd lived a lie.

He'd never been the white knight, only in his mind, only by the grace of his rival...the man he'd believed himself justified in calling the enemy...

All the truths that he'd thought he'd know...had all been destroyed in one bitter blow. He'd died content, thinking that he'd managed to make something of himself, managed to prove himself to those who had doubted him, to Cid and Edea, to the classmates who'd mocked him before Squall had shown his true colours... He couldn't, wouldn't, see past what he saw as the ultimate mockery, the ultimate prank...

Somewhere, deep in his subconsciousness, Seifer knew that Squall hadn't meant any of it as a prank. That the brunette had truly loved him, and had sought only to help his dreams come true...but Squall hadn't understood... Seifer would far rather have stayed with him in the lands of the dead, would far rather have known that he'd played a bad hand this time around, than learn - too late - that nothing was as it had seemed.

Seifer's ego, his pride, had been dealt a crushing blow that it would not quickly - if ever - recover from. He had no way of confronting Squall - well, he had tried, but Squall was simply too far gone - and seeking a resolution, pouring out his feelings in a purging that he desperately needed.

Likewise his attempt to force some semblance of awareness into Squall, by clinging to his leg as he re-entered the grey lands, had been baulked by Selphie and Irvine. He had wanted to scream at them too, but he had seen their broken spirits, remembered that they too had been denied absolution by Squall's actions, and he had turned away instead.

He thought they'd chosen the brief oblivion of mortality shortly after that, for he hadn't seen them since.

He'd seen others come and go that he had once known, but he didn't care. His wounded feelings, his bitterness and anger festered inside him, a boil that only Squall, mindless, oblivious Squall, could have lanced.

Feeling alone amongst a million other souls, Seifer slowly descended into a madness that only the dead could achieve. He would, he was determined, prove himself better, stronger than Squall. His day would come, and whereas Squall had destroyed the world to remake balance, seeking to bring things into harmony with the cycle of life and death, he, Seifer would do better.

He would ~conquer~ death...

***

AN: And there you have it...the conclusion to the Sorcerer Arc. More conflicts than resolutions perhaps, and I didn't mention everyone that I could have done, but then I suspect quite a few familiar souls will make an appearance in the next Arc.

Thanks to: Everyone who reviewed (few of you though that was), you are all that kept me going through the end of this, and perhaps the only reason that I'm willing to keep going with the series. I will most likely take a hiatus from it now however, since I have timelines to rough out, maps to draw and compare, and, as some of you may know, my HP fic Corvine to get working on.

The big review response that follows is fairly standard for what anyone who asks a deep question, or leaves a long review, gets back in response.

Reviewer: **Vialana**

Wow, where to start responding to such a heart-warming review? From the top I guess :)

"I thought this was one of the most original and fantastic FFVI epics I've come across. First you had such an intricate and engaging poltline. I had no idea how this arc was going to turn out, you continuously took the story into different and unexpected places. I mean, killing off the whole world, that's gutsy and I never saw it coming. Especially having Squall the one behind it all."

sniggers you probably wouldn't believe that, for the first two books, this didn't actually have a plotline, and certainly at that point I didn't know the whole world was going to snuff it. The whole four books (41 chapters total) was a journey of discovery for me as much as for everyone who read or will read it. I'm just glad that I managed to make everything hang together believably - although it did go through one revision about a third of the way through when I realised there were too many things that were unlikely, unexplainable or outright contradicted elsewhere. As for killing off the world, well, it got to the point where Squall really did just seem to be as bad as Kylari, and I was struggling for his motivation - he'd lost friends, family, and the world was gearing itself up for a war in which there really weren't going to be many survivors at all; at the highest level Gods were involved, more specifically the God who had originally made the world, and the Goddess who had royally messed it up, so the thought occurred to me, Gods being Gods, why not actually make the coming war the Apocalypse, the only difference being that the winner gets to re-create the world to their liking? Squall's motivation suddenly fell squarely into my lap, and several other matters - such as Selphie and Irvine's ghosts supporting his actions (albeit indirectly) - cleared themselves up. So, killing the world, gutsy maybe, but you can't (I think), write an FFVIII epic without something that big driving the story, especially not an epic that takes place after your standard 'saving the world from near-annihilation' plot ;)

Heh, can you tell this is going to be a loong response? Okay, next bit.

"On top of that you managed to integrate such wonderful characterisation into the plot without detracting from either of them. I was furious as I was learning about what Squall had done, most especially about what he'd done to Seifer. But then after the many confrontations, you still managed to get Squall's point of view across and make him sympathetic."

I love writing both Seifer and Squall, they're both characters I can really identify with, and it isn't rare for me to think or say something and then immediately think 'that was a very Squall/Seifer' thought/comment. Squall is such a complex character, and he's so frequently portrayed as a quiet loner with a heart of gold; I find there's so much more to him. Yes, he can 'do the right thing', but all through FFVIII he's being paid to fight Ultemecia - if he'd grown up to join the Galbadian Army and had been recruited by her, I have no doubt that, at least for a while, he would have fought just as hard for her as he does against her. Squall is a mercenary, he follows his orders, and if his orders were to do so, he probably would massacre a family down to the last child. I also have a pet hate for people who write 'dumb/unobservant' Squall without a damn good excuse. Just because he's quiet doesn't mean he's stupid; personally I think, like me, he's found that if you want to keep your secrets and make your enemies underestimate you, it's best to remain silent and let people make assumptions. It was those two qualities I wanted to bring to the fore whilst writing him in the Arc, and I think (I hope) that it worked. Yes, he's a lying, deceptive bastard, but he has his reasons, and he's extremely clever about his manipulations and subterfuges. Seifer, on the other hand, is usually portrayed as the hard-nosed, hot-headed one of the pair, but I think (and again hope) that I managed to pull off a credible 'Seifer-in-support-role' that allowed him to explore some of his insecurities and more sensitive side. He gets to show that being the 'loving' one doesn't necessarily mean being the one who needs to be protected, but at the same time he doesn't get overshadowed by Squall's powers - it is Seifer who finally gets rid of the Blue Widows, not Squall. I'd also like to think that I managed to power Squall up quite credibly; he's a sorcerer, but like the sorceresses, that doesn't make him able to do absolutely anything.

Whew...still going lol...

"The last few chapters were absolutely heart-wrenching. The ending I do have to say was brilliant. It was fitting for the arc, capturing the tone completely."

I'm really glad that I've had such a positive response to the last few chapters. At the time (as you may be able to tell from the rants in the ANs) I was feeling extremely depressed about the lack of reviews for something that I've invested a considerable amount of time in (especially on correcting formatting gliches), and I'm relieved to find that it didn't come out in my writing other than perhaps deepening the emotional charge in them. It's often quite hard to strike the right balance after something as dramatic as the destruction and rebirth of the world, especially when you need to keep a certain level of tension in order to lead (potentially) into a sequel. Before you ask, no, said sequel wouldn't involve blowing the universe to kingdom come ;)

Sheesh, hope I'm not boring you with all this... grins can you tell I'm very happy to have had your review?

"The world was saved and all, but is it really any better with Seifer and Squall apart like that? It's not excatly happy, but I like the thoughts and emotions the ending provokes. I'm really quite intrigued to see if you wil extend this any further."

Ah, the big questions left hanging at the end... Well, the question now is how much to say in answer? Is the world any better? I'm afraid the answer to that is yes, since Squall could only have returned as a demi-god and would have gone insane trying to remember two realities - not a good thing for a world, having an insane demi-god on it. Seifer, for the moment at least, only has those few memory gliches that he ignores, so he doesn't know that anything is wrong. As for extending it...yes, the reason the Arc ends where it does is because of the huge time gap between its 'conclusion' and where the 'sequel' picks (or will pick) up. The thirteenth chapter of Endgame (yes, there will eventually be one) is actually going to be a mid-point standalone piece. For the sequel itself, all I'll say at this point is that it will cover both the FFX and FFX-2 fandoms.

"I would love to see more, to see how things turn out after everything, whether Seifer remembers anything later on or if something happens with Squall."

Well, in answer to that, yes, Seifer eventually begins to remember things whilst he is in the Land of the Dead, and yes, something happens with Squall. Saying any more at this point would be too much of a spoiler however ;)

In closing (finally lol) I thank you from the bottom of my heart for both your review and adding the Sorcerer Arc to your C2, and I hope I didn't bore you to death with such a long reply.

And to finish, a list of everyone who reviewed the series: 

**Kitty-Chan, UchiNaru no Miko  
AnimeGrrl  
Rei the Wind Spirit  
Storm Dragon Girl (x2)  
goldengirlrallyho!   
mombanightAdvenger  
JKH  
Yume Li  
eeza  
YoungEros (x3)  
Vialana**

Thank you all - see you sometime in the sequels...

Zephyr5


	14. Author nb: next in sequence

Hi to everyone who put 'Endgame' on Author Alert, or are reading it for the first time (or reading it again :p). I know it's been a while, and that some of you probably thought this fic was gonna die here, but fear not (or fear a lot if you don't like epic fics XD), for the 'filler' fic is here. It's only short (four chapters), but it bridges the gap between the end of the Sorcerer Arc and the start of the Ghost Arc.

On the plus side, all four chapters are written, so it won't be forever being posted (unless I forget about it XD), but it may be a while before I get around to starting on the Ghost Arc, what with Real Life and wanting to replay FFX to refresh my memory. So, I'll stop waffling, give you the name of the fic, and leave you to decide whether you want to read it or not; reviews, as ever, are very welcome.

The next part of the Transcendence Arc is: **Chaos Rising**

Hope you all enjoy,

Zephyr5


End file.
